


your claws in me

by burlesquecomposer



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But mainly it's a lot of. well, Dark!Lance, Druid Magic is a bitch, Galra!Keith, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Partial Mind Control, Psychological Trauma, Things get better. slowly. eventually, Violence, the Galra are Assholes In General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:19:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7425328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burlesquecomposer/pseuds/burlesquecomposer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Oh trust me. When I’m done with you, I won’t be able to stop laughing,” Lance says lowly, and his lips curl farther, and there’s something wild in his stare, and it hits Keith suddenly.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><i>This isn’t Lance.</i><br/> </p><p>Lance falls under the control of Zarkon's Druids, and although his friends manage to get him back, nothing is quite the same. Maybe the Galra succeeded after all. Maybe the Galra merely wanted to tear Team Voltron apart from the inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s silent on the feed for a while, and then Lance says, “You think there’ll be any—”

“ _Lance._ ”

“What? I was gonna say, I wonder if there’ll be any cool new alien species we haven’t seen.”

He swears he can hear Pidge roll their eyes. “You mean ‘hot girls,' Lance. Give up.”

“All right, fine,” Lance huffs, sitting back in his seat. “But jeez, Pidge, be a little more open-minded.”

“Might be time to close yours.”

“Keith, I will _have you know—_ “

“That’s enough,” Shiro says, coming through stern and solid. “We’re approaching. Cool your jets, everyone.”

They usually take three pods instead of the lions on these ventures; less risk, since they won’t actually be attacking the ship. It’s more of a rescue mission than a Defeat Zarkon mission, though it contributes, but being a rescue mission means there will be few explosions, much to Lance’s dismay. But they’re doing what they can, for now — extraction. Get in, gather up as many prisoners into their pods as possible, get out. Pidge’s idea. Allura and Coran will hold the fort on the outside to keep the Galra fleet distracted while Team Voltron slips in hopefully unnoticed.

“I’m bringing you into the ship now,” Allura says. “Shiro, Pidge, tackle the main cells and see if you can ask around for Matt and Sam Holt while you’re there. Hunk, Lance, I want you looking in the workrooms for additional prisoners. Keith, take out any Galra you find to distract them from the others.”

Lance laughs. “Ha ha, you’re on defense.”

“Why do you make that sound like a bad thing?”

“Because the rest of us will get to be _~heroes~,_ Keith,” he sings.

“If I weren’t here on this mission you’d be overrun by Galra in minutes.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it, buddy. I’m only teasing~”

“Ignore him,” Pidge says. “Please. Don’t feed the beast.”

“I’m not feeding the beast!”

“I’m not a beast!”

They don’t even notice their pods landing until the metal jerks and groans when they’ve reached the deck. Once they emerge from their pods, helmets on, blasts can be heard from the outside.

“It’s okay to be jealous, Keith.”

“What do I have to be jealous about?”

“Not getting any tail, dude.”

“Lance, you’re not getting anything.”

“But at least you’re not, either!”

It’s quiet on the other end of the feed.

“ _Keith._ ”

“Whoa, when?!”

“Awesome, my man! Didn’t know you had it in you!”

“No, seriously, _when in the hell—_ “

“It’s none of your business, Lance.”

“It is _absolutely_ my business, Keith! We’re a team and you _bonded without us_.”

“Lance, please don’t make this weird.”

“ _You’re_ making it weird!”

“I hate you,” Keith groans.

“They’re firing at our particle barrier,” Coran interrupts sharply. “You have an hour, at best. Quit bickering and get moving! … Keith, uh... congratulations?”

“T-thanks,” Keith stammers.

They summon their bayards and split up, following Allura’s guidance to each of their checkpoints. They’ve done rescue missions half a dozen times already, so they know the drill. Go fast, in and out. Prioritize the weak, the elderly, and the children. Get them on the pods and get out. Return to the ship and warp away. One hour.

All things considered, it should’ve been easy.

 

~

 

It’s when Hunk and Lance each take a fork of the hall that they get separated. Hunk is leading a group of prisoners and searching for another row of cells when he hears a yell and several shots, familiar ones — Lance’s gun — and others, and finally Lance’s voice comes through on his feed. “Hunk! Oh hell, they—” A piercing click cuts him off, followed by an unsettling silence.

Hunk hates it, hates hearing nothing from the chatterbox best friend who should be talking his ear off even in times of crisis. “Lance?” he ventures, but gets no response. “Lance! _Lance!_ ”

“What’s wrong?” asks one of the prisoners beside him; Hunk has to look down far to see them. A little frog-like creature, probably a child, with huge blue eyes that appear to swim as galaxies of their own.

Hunk swallows thickly. He’s unsure of what to say. They have a mission to accomplish, and all these prisoners don’t deserve to be abandoned for one guy. He can’t prioritize his friend, can’t make an exception, and he's aware of that. _The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,_ he knows, he’s seen Star Trek, but the thing is, Spock was kind of _wrong._

He hails the others. “Guys, I lost Lance. I think-” He tries not to breathe as fast as his body wants to, no matter how much the breakfast in his stomach is aching to ride back up in him. “I think the Galra took him, he’s not responding. I-I-I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe he finally learned to shut up.”

Hunk growls, “ _Keith,_ not now!”

“We have to get more prisoners out,“ Pidge says. “There’s no time to focus on anything else.”

“We can’t leave Lance behind,” Shiro responds, austere. “Hunk, take the prisoners you have and get them to your pod first. Then see if you can find Lance. Keith, go find Hunk, you two can look together.”

“But by the time I do all that—“

“Hunk, just _do it_ , that’s an order. We need to rescue these people or this whole mission is for nothing.”

Hunk glances once more at the little frog alien. Their gaze is locked on him, big eyes holding that same universal expression of fear that seems to run across any and all species. He takes a deep breath and counts to ten as he exhales.

“Okay.”

_I’m comin’ for you, buddy._

Hunk does as Shiro tells him, escorting all the prisoners he can to the pod, occasionally shooting down a guard as they make their way through the ship. He counts them off — there are about seventeen, and it’s all the pod will hold aside from room for himself and Lance. Provided Lance is okay. Provided he can find Lance at all.

He pulls a couple of spare blasters from the pod and hands them to the most capable. Tells them it’s not much, but it should be enough to defend themselves if the pod’s thin shield goes down.

Hunk only has enough grace to fill a teaspoon, but he creeps to the best of his ability around the halls of the ship back to the place he lost Lance, avoiding the guards making their patterned rounds. They took Lance in the other direction, meaning he has to be located more toward the center, the heart of this vessel.

_If he’s even alive. Would they kill him? Yes, of course they would, these are the Galra. But they haven’t yet used him as bait the way they usually do. If they’re keeping him alive, why? What for?_

He shakes his head to get rid of the intrusive thoughts and mutters to himself. Can’t think like that, Hunk. Stay positive. Lance is fine. They’re holding him in a room somewhere, or putting him in a cell, or demanding, _Where are the lions?!_ and Lance will spit in their faces and say, _Fuck you, I’ll never tell!_ That’s the friend he knows. The living one.

He’s so immersed in checking each doorway he finds that he almost doesn’t spot Lance’s wiry but very alive figure standing at the end of the hall. Hunk has to double-take and then breaks out into a relieved smile and runs to him, crushing him in a signature Hunk Hug™. “Lance! Holy crow, you’re okay.”

Lance groans and grimaces. “Careful there, dude!”

“Sorry, I just–“ Hunk looks over him. “Jeez, I thought you were done for! I thought you were dead! Thought maybe they killed you, or were interrogating you, or–”

“Relax, Hunk, I’m fine! Though they damaged my bayard.” Lance dangles it between them. “But I got out! They just let me go!”

That gets a pause from Hunk. His wheels turn, but there aren’t enough gears to get them going, not enough info to fill in the blanks.

“They just… let you go?” he says slowly.

“Yeah, can you believe it?” Lance’s grin is wide, and he pats Hunk hard on the shoulder as he starts to head off.

For a moment, only Hunk’s gaze follows. There’s something about the way Lance is carrying himself. His back is straighter. His movements are more precise. He’s confident, but not in the way Hunk knows means he’s hiding pounds of insecurity.

“No,” he mutters to himself, walking after Lance. “I can’t.”

 

~

 

Minutes later, the team gets a scrambled transmission from Hunk that almost makes Keith miss his target. “Help! … Get over … Lance—“

It fizzles out into nothing.

“What in the world is going on this time?” he growls.

“You haven’t found Hunk yet, Keith?” Pidge says.

“No, I _haven’t_ , you put me on Galra duty and I’m trying to—“ He cuts out for a second. “ _Quiznak._ They’re relentless. _”_

 _“_ We need you to find Hunk and Lance,” Shiro responds. “Just evade the Galra for now, they’ll only slow you down. We’re getting our own prisoners on board. Coran, how much longer do we have?”

“Twenty minutes!” Coran pipes up.

“That should be enough. Allura, can you get their location and guide Keith?”

“I can try,” she says, “but their signals appear to be damaged.”

“Once we’ve got everyone, we can go,” Pidge says. “Just get Hunk and Lance and bring them back to their pod and we can call this a general success.“

Keith tries not to sound as aggravated as he is, because he _hates_ playing babysitter, especially for Lance, but Hunk too? At least Hunk is generally able to manage himself, although something seems wrong now. “Fine,” he says, retreating his bayard for now. Stealth mode it is.

He lines his back against the wall to hide from passing sentries, though his instincts urge him to attack. _Down, boy_. Damn these weird Galra genes. Just another part of himself he has to push down, burn, bury, or he’ll risk their objective.

Allura taught him how to meditate. It works, sometimes.

Keith feels as though an hour has passed, but Coran hasn’t bitched at him to go back, so it can’t have been long. He checks room after room, a few times narrowly avoiding the turning gaze of a Galra soldier stationed there. His fights had been drawing more Galra toward him, but he wants them away now.

Anger and relief both swim through him at odds when he spots a familiar blue paladin suit.

“ _There_ you are,” he starts, but stops short. Lance is hunched low, and at first Keith thinks he’s just taking a break, because there are Galra soldiers scattered all over the floor broken and battered, but then he sees Hunk lying flat on his back at Lance’s feet. Lance has his hand on Hunk’s chest, where the armor is half-shattered at the point of the _V_ insignia they all wear, and his left arm doesn’t seem to be bending correctly. Lance’s head turns and Keith’s heart crumbles just so when he sees tears welling up in his eyes.

“I-I don’t… He… I can’t carry him…” Lance stammers.

“Is he still breathing?” Keith asks, running over to join him kneeling down. “Shiro, Pidge — Hunk is down, I need you over here as soon as you can. Allura, is his heart still beating?”

“I don’t know,” Allura says, “I can’t get a reading. His suit is too badly damaged.”

“We’ll be over as soon as we finish loading the pod,” Pidge responds.

An audible shudder rips through Lance from his throat. “We just found each other again, and he— I— we thought we got them all, but—”

“Shit,” Keith mutters. He tugs his helmet off and claws away at the broken armor of Hunk’s suit so he can press an ear to his body. He can’t tell, can’t feel it too much through the rest of the suit, so his hands rise to Hunk’s face so he can see if he might be breathing. “Whatever hit him in the chest didn’t go through, at least.”

“W-we can’t both carry him,” Lance says. He finally gets to his feet, taking a couple steps back to assess the situation. “Fuck, I should’ve been careful, my bayard broke— Hunk had to do everything himself, and I was _useless–_ ”

“ _Stop_ beating yourself up, Lance,” Keith says, quick to figure out that Lance is going to be all but useless right now. He knows Lance and Hunk are close, but how close, he had no idea, until now. Until he sees him slowly falling apart, hears him shattering. He’s never seen Lance like this, and honestly he thinks it’s a little much unless he really believes Hunk could be dead. He _would_ offer his sympathies, hold Lance until he stops shaking, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but Keith has never been particularly good at the whole Interpersonal Sentiment thing.

“I think he’s going to be all right,” Keith says after a few moments. “Just unconscious, but his arm might be broken. Nothing we can’t fix.”

The sound of sliding metal behind him makes him freeze.

“Hey, Lance—!”

He turns and manages to summon his shield just in time to counter the blue sword that clashes against it. Keith’s wrist complains under the weight and Lance is _strong_ as he pushes it down, insistent, until Keith’s arm begins to shake. Keith shoves Lance off him, stands so he can bring out his own bayard and finally see Lance’s blank, cold expression. The tears are gone, like he never shed them in the first place.

“Lance—” Keith starts, but Lance is suddenly right in front of him, and they cross swords again with brutal force. Keith never knew he even _could_ change the weapon of his bayard; Allura told them the bayards always manifested uniquely for the wearer. And if combat training had taught Keith anything, it was that Lance couldn’t swordfight to save his life, literally. Yet here he is, whipping his blade around as if it’s lighter than air, his body twisting and twirling with a fluid grace yet an immense power, neither of which Keith was aware the paladin possessed, and he only has time to block and evade with no room to think until they cross swords again. A slight pause. It’s good enough.

“Lance,” Keith strains, glaring at him incredulously, because none of this makes any sense, “what the hell are you doing?!”

Lance finally smiles wide, but his eyes don’t crinkle to match the way they normally do. They’re _cold_ , like the ice of the Blue Lion has seeped into him. His canines seem sharper as he says, in a voice that sounds ever so slightly _wrong_ , “Not up for a little impromptu sparring, _buddy?_ ”

Keith struggles to catch his breath now that they’re locked together at a standstill. “You blue idiot, what’s wrong with you?! This isn’t funny!”

“Oh trust me. When I’m done with you, I won’t be able to stop laughing,” Lance says lowly, and his lips curl farther, and there’s something wild in his stare, and it hits Keith suddenly.

This isn’t Lance.

Keith pauses enough to allow Lance to strike again, sending him stumbling back a few feet, nearly tripping over Hunk’s unconscious body _and_ the words that try to leave him, “You— You’re not— What have you done with Lance, where is he?” Because this _can’t_ be Lance, and the Galra _have_ to be using a double and holding the real one somewhere else, but this _thing_ looks exactly like him. He gets his shield up and Lance is there in a mere tic and— fuck, when did he get so damn _fast?_

“I’m right here, Keith!”

Lance swings his bayard down and it cracks the floor as Keith jumps out of the way. Hell, he can’t even attack, not when he doesn’t know whether this is a copycat or if it’s actually his body they’re using. He’s sick at the thought, but it’s the perfect trick, he realizes: the Galra know none of the paladins would ever risk hurting one of their own.

“This is why species like yours are doomed to fail,” Lance says, a smooth confidence to his tone. “You care too much for others, so much you’d rather die for them. It’s a weakness.”

Keith lifts his gaze to find Lance’s eyes washed over with a piercing Galra yellow and instinctually, with the human part of him, desperately wants nothing more than to run.

Keith has never wanted to run from a fight. He rushes in headfirst every time, rarely taking a moment to think before he dives into the fray. The team has always known his tendency and chided him for it, though Keith has yet to find a reason to quit now when it’s worked out so far — hasn’t died yet. Here, he wants to run. Here, he can feel the sensation of Lance’s gaze curling up into him, toying with him, enticing him. _Play with me, Keith. Just_ try _not to hurt me, your teammate, your partner, your friend._ The adrenaline rushing through him is wavering between fight or flight and edging more toward flight. But running, even if he could go grab Shiro and Pidge for backup, would leave Hunk defenseless and not-Lance would happily use him as a hostage.

“Lance? Are you there?”

Allura. Allura opened her channel, Keith can warn her—

Lance smiles primly at Keith and says, eerily slipping back into a panic he now knows is fake, “I-I’m here. Hunk, he— he doesn’t look good, and now Keith—”

Keith’s helmet is on the ground several feet away, but he can _try_ , dammit, “Allura! Lance—”

He’s in the air, and the wind is out of his lungs with Lance’s elbow jabbed right into his solar plexus, and then he hits the ground, going still, his world drowning to black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm surprised and so so happy that the first part got such a good response!
> 
> I love every one of you.
> 
> Now, all aboard the Suffering Train :)

Pidge and Shiro are hailed privately by Allura with a soft but firm, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“What do you mean?” Pidge asks while fixing a wire short in the pod. Shiro’s ushering in the prisoners they’ve freed, making sure all of them are ready to go and haven’t left anyone important behind since they still have a bit of room available, if needed.

“First Lance, then Hunk, now Keith…” she murmurs. “I’m checking our details. I think we’ve done something wrong along the way.”

“Wrong?” Shiro says. “We got a good amount of prisoners. And so far, no one’s come to intercept us.”

“Not _us_ ,” she says, “but… I wonder if they’re planning something. The Galra, I mean. And we won’t be able to counter, well, whatever this is, if we’re all so unsynchronized.”

“I think we should get out everyone as fast as we can by your instincts, Allura,” Pidge responds. “Shiro? Are you almost ready?”

He nods. “I am.”

They send the pods with the rescued back to the Castle. Allura helps Shiro and Pidge through the halls, making sure to avoid the Galra on the way — they _really_ don’t need any more casualties, Pidge thinks, because there’s no way Pidge can carry one of the other paladins, honestly, let alone more. But Lance seemed all right over the feed, if not somewhat shaken. Although… hadn’t he said his bayard was damaged?

How has he been able to defend himself all this time if everyone around him is dropping like flies?

Shiro runs in first; they both find Lance kneeling beside Hunk and Keith who are sprawled on their backs, unconscious. They can hear Lance breathing quick and shallow as they draw nearer, and Lance has taken his helmet off in favor of running a hand through the short strands of his hair and clenching them tight in his fist.

“Lance,” Shiro says gently, touching his shoulder, which seems to make Lance jump. “It’s okay, we’re here. We’ve got everyone on the pods, so now all we need to do is get Hunk and Keith over there and we can go.”

Lance gives Shiro a quick nod, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down his throat with a hard swallow. His bayard changes from hand to hand a couple of times nervously until it settles white-knuckled in his left.

It doesn’t look damaged. Pidge frowns, but heads down to check on Hunk while Shiro goes for Keith. “Do you mind telling us what happened?” Pidge asks.

Lance touches Hunk’s shoulder, a curiously tense look on his face. Like he has to concentrate, think about his words, keep a certain venom out of them. “Yeah, Hunk went down. Then Keith finally found us, a-and… more of them came, Keith, Keith, he… he just managed to defend me, but…”

“It’s fine,” Pidge says. “Shiro. Hunk’s arm is broken, we’ll need a way to keep it level while we move him. And I… Well, I can’t move him for obvious reasons.”

“I can take Hunk,” Shiro responds from where he’s got Keith, feeling his forehead, trying to check for his pulse. He patches through to Allura. “Hunk and Keith are unconscious. We’ll get them over to the pods and leave as soon as we can.”

“Good!” Coran chirps. “Because we don’t have much time now! Please hurry!”

Shiro lifts Keith up until he’s hanging from his shoulder. Keith stirs, head rolling, and a slight rasp leaves him as his feet drag across the floor.

“Lance?” Shiro offers. “I’m going to need you to take Keith.”

Pidge feels a tightness in their throat and knows, suddenly, instinctively, that something is wrong with Lance. It’s something more than just his strange, unbridled panic over seeing Hunk and Keith go down around him. As Shiro speaks to him now, there’s a shift — his eyes are steady on Keith, and there’s a darkness to them. For the first time, Lance looks not simply off but _dangerous_ , like he could kill but not _for_ anyone else, and his bayard is still in his left hand, gripped like he’s prepared to use it.

“In the meantime,” Pidge says, gaze narrowing, “I’ll fix your bayard.”

“What?” Lance says, startled. “No, it’s fine, we can fix it back at the Castle. We don’t have time.”

Pidge levels him with a stare. “It’ll be useful when we go back to the pods. Shiro will have to carry Hunk, so I’m the only defense. That doesn’t make me quite comfortable. Just give it to me.”

Shiro starts, “Pidge—”

“Lance,” Pidge says, firm, glaring him down.

“No.”

“Why not?”

They notice Lance’s jaw twitch. “Because we need to get back to the Castle. Hunk and Keith need medical attention. That’s our first priority.” He moves for Shiro and Keith again, only to pause as Pidge summons their bayard and poises it at his neck.

“Pidge, what are you doing?” Shiro leans a little, like he’d go to them if he wasn’t busy holding Keith who is now stirring more heavily from unconsciousness. Keith gasps and clutches at Shiro, nearly stumbling, a motion that grabs Shiro’s attention as he tries to rouse him, because maybe he could walk on his own at this rate.

Pidge keeps their weapon at Lance’s throat until his skin glows emerald from it and says, “Summon your bayard.”

“Shiro?” Keith murmurs, blinking awake. “Lance, where’s Lance?”

“Lance is here, he’s fine—”

“ _No—_ ”

Lance’s eyes dart down to Pidge and he tilts up his chin. “It’s broken,” he says slowly.

“It’s also in your left hand,” Pidge says, a challenge in their grin. “I thought you were right-handed.”

He quirks a brow and the corner of his mouth curls in a slight smirk that sends chills up their spine. “So?”

“ _Pidge, get away from him!”_ Keith yells. _“That’s not Lance!”_

Pidge only just manages to evade the blue sword that so easily could have ripped through their body with ruthless agility. Pidge jumps several steps back because they’re not _stupid_ — they know they’re much smaller, and their weapon is tiny in comparison to his sword, and neither stand very much of a chance against Lance at close-range combat.

“It’s a copy,” Keith explains, using Shiro’s shoulder to stand. “Or he’s freaking _possessed_ , or _brainwashed_ or something, but that’s not him.”

Lance straightens his back, twirls the sword in his fingers with ease, and glances smoothly between the three of them. The transformation is unnerving to watch. It looks like Lance, but whatever _it_ is underneath is merely wearing Lance’s body, stepping into a skin that doesn’t fit quite right, that no longer has Lance in mind.

A predator in the unassuming body of prey.

“Brainwashed? Possessed? It’s more complicated than that,” Lance says. “You all think we’ve turned Lance into something different. But we promise, this is Lance…” His head tilts to one side. “Amplified.”

Pidge wrinkles their nose. “You’re not Lance at all. Lance doesn’t want to kill us.”

“Oh?” The surprise on Lance’s face is performed but nonetheless wrought with genuine amusement. To Pidge’s confusion, to their _horror_ , Lance retreats his bayard and approaches with careful steps. Fluid, deliberate, stalking, and Pidge finds themself inching back in response. “Do you even know? How _easy_ it was to take him? To tell Lance what he could become? Stronger, better, faster… All he had to do was let go of what was holding him back. Friends, family…”

“Lance would never,” Pidge says, only because they can’t move. There’s murder in Lance’s eyes, and he’s so close, so close now, a mere few feet’s distance. Lance draws out his bayard again, slowly, summoning it with his other hand inch by inch.

“I was going to wait until we were back on the ship to kill all of you,” he says casually. “But honestly, it’s been much more fun hunting you down one by one.”

And he smiles like he’s the happiest he’s ever been, all while steadying the sword in his grip.

“Allura, Lance has been influenced by the Galra! We need you down here!”

Lance turns and _growls_ at the black paladin, the flash of yellow returning to his eyes. Shiro stands defiant, and Lance seems to know that he’s lost. That even if he takes down the rest of the paladins, he’ll never be able to take out Allura and Coran by gaining their trust. But he’s desperate, too, and feral with it, so he swings his sword at Pidge.

It all goes by too quickly for Pidge to catch on until it’s already happened. One minute Lance and death are all too close, and the next minute Shiro’s body is curled around Pidge, left arm around their shoulders, right cybernetic arm lacerated by Lance’s blade. It sparks and crackles and the metal has not been pierced all the way through but it’s more than half, and all the same the rosy Galra glow of Shiro’s hand fizzles and dies. Lance curls his lip back into a snarl and spits out, “Such a waste.”

“Shiro,” Pidge breathes.

Shiro holds the blade still and away. His eyes are closed tight. “Pidge, run.”

“But—”

“ _Pidge, get out of here!”_

Keith, meanwhile, uses the momentum to stumble towards his own bayard on the floor and rolls to grab it. He stands, gasping, and brandishes his sword at Lance.

“Let them go.”

Lance clicks his tongue. “Don’t use that thing if you aren’t planning to kill me.”

Keith frowns, even though everyone knows not-Lance is right. “I can still threaten you with it.”

Pidge stays curled in Shiro’s embrace, preferring the protection of that more than anything else. Even though the thought of it all is still horrific — Shiro sacrificed his arm to save Pidge because Pidge was useless and couldn’t _move_ , couldn’t do anything to defend themself from Lance except fucking _stand there_ waiting to be killed. They can’t even follow Shiro’s simple order to run, feet rooted to the floor, legs locked, hands shaking, eyes wide and too stunned to look away.

Lance hums, offering a fond smile, and turns his own bayard on himself.

“Your move.”

Keith’s eyes fly wide open, but all the same his energy seems to drain from him. He looks _exhausted_ , like he can’t fight anymore, like he doesn’t want to, because otherwise he’s consenting to watch Lance kill himself right in front of him. His sword sinks a little. He’s at an impasse; they all are.

“You know, this would _all_ be easier if you’d just hand over your lions,” Lance offers, pointing the blade at his stomach. His eyes blink alight once more. “Zarkon would be _so_ pleased with me, with you. He may spare your lives. You might even get to have your Lance again. Though… I can’t guarantee he’ll be the same Lance you used to—”

Pidge darts up behind him and strikes their bayard straight into Lance’s back, sending him rigid in a flurry of electricity. He jolts up, back arching as a scream is ripped out of him, and the bayard shimmers out as it falls from his grip.

“I’m sorry,” Pidge whispers wetly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Lance inhales sharply. Seconds pass like minutes, hours, before the yellow leaves his eyes as he crumples to the floor. Unconscious and still, an innocence to the way he falls and his head rolls slightly on the floor, shifting his soft brown hair underneath it.

 

~

 

With Shiro, Allura, and Pidge otherwise out of commission, it’s up to Keith to carry Lance on their trek back to the pod, which is tense and uneasy and full of long silences. Lance’s arms are locked around Keith’s shoulders by a pair of handcuffs, and his head rests on the nape of Keith’s neck, and Keith has to swallow every time he so much as _thinks_ Lance is moving, because only moments ago Lance was bloodthirsty and merciless, and he’s desperate to know, when they learn more, if they’ll ever have him back to normal. He holds both bayards looped around his wrist, and they knock together when he walks with a painful constant reminder.

“This isn’t just a prison ship, as it turns out,” Allura is explaining to the others, all behind Keith so the team can keep an eye on Lance’s movements.

“Just?” says Pidge.

She nods, hefting Hunk a little easier over her shoulder with his unbroken arm. “This _is_ a prison ship, but it’s also… well, I don’t know how else to put this. It’s a ship often used by the Galra to conduct experiments. Their Druids… Well, let’s just say Shiro is familiar with them.”

Shiro winces, trying to flex his arm even though it doesn’t respond to the signal. He knows the Druids all too well, and it’s disgusting to think that Lance has now been hurt by them, too. Vaguely, brought on by his own fears, he wonders if they’ll have to keep Lance caged somewhere in the Castle, left to yell and scream and curse and rot; hopelessly imprisoned the way Shiro has always imagined himself if there ever comes a time that the Galra tech woven through him takes over, the way Haggar once nearly did.

The news sends a similar shiver up Pidge’s spine. Their father, their brother… There’s a high chance they could be used in experiments if they haven’t been already, and if they end up like Shiro or worse, like Lance… The idea is sickening, at best.

Pidge falls into step alongside Shiro and finds the floor of the Galra ship positively fascinating. Anything is better than facing the damage to Shiro’s arm that they caused. How does Shiro feel about all this? Does he resent them? Hate them? Pidge bites their lip and ducks their head forward, using the paladin helmet as a shield for now, but gives a brief glance up to Keith ahead of them.

Lance’s form seems so unassuming and peaceful draped over Keith’s back.

 

~

 

Allura and Coran summons the remaining three paladins into the larger pod deck of the Castle to hear, as she calls it, “good news and bad news,” even though there is really no _good_ news as it turns out, just “bad news and worse news.”

Lance has been placed in the same cell that the team once used to hold Sendak. Hollow tubes feed out from the top of the pod and sit attached in a sequence down Lance’s spine; an iridescent pink flows through them. He’s seemingly frozen, at least for now, with his eyes closed and breathing controlled, but his wrists, ankles, waist are all cuffed to the pod’s interior. An unfortunate safety measure.

“Coran and I have been studying his condition,” she says, pulling up a few screens from the tablet in her hands. “This is definitely Lance. Scans match the ones performed on your first day here at the Castle, so all of that checks out. Which, I suppose, is fairly good news, considering it means we don’t need to return to that Galra ship on another rescue mission.”

There’s silence from the paladins. Allura coughs and decides to continue.

“But this _is_ Druid work, as I feared. It would be one thing if this were simply the Galra’s doing, but Druid magic is incredibly complex and difficult to understand from a merely scientific perspective.”

Shiro’s brows knit together. “What did they do to him? They didn’t even have him for very long.”

“That is unclear,” Allura answers. “Which is why I want you all to take a look at this.”

She summons another set of screens to project before them all. They show two bodily figures side by side, active and animated but two-dimensional all the same. “This is Lance’s nervous system before… and this is it now.” The second figure’s neural network, instead of the screen’s normal soft blue, bears threads and specks of Galra pink.

“Whoa,” Pidge murmurs. “That doesn’t look good.”

“Because it’s not,” Allura says, frowning at it. “Whatever they did to him, whether they found some way to control him, or influence him, or directly possess him… It’s all woven directly into his DNA.”

Keith folds his arms and turns his gaze to the pod where Lance rests. “Well, can you take it out?”

“This isn’t just the brain or the blood, Keith,” Coran says, his face set into a mature sorrow uncharacteristic of his normal cheer. “This is the DNA. The very makeup of a person, the code that programs a living being. To edit DNA is to perform surgery on one’s atoms with potentially catastrophic consequences, and the science of it has never been completely perfected.” He gestures to the wires that line Lance’s back. “We’re doing what we can. But removing all of that Druid and Galra DNA, while trying to keep his own intact… It’s very dangerous. It could kill Lance in the process.”

Keith’s jaw tightens. “How long will it take? How long has it already taken?”

“After twelve hours, the enemy DNA in Lance’s system has gone down from fifty-four percent to… fifty-two.”

Keith runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus…”

The group is silent for a moment before Pidge asks, “How is Hunk?”

“Better,” Allura says with some relief. “The chestpiece of his armor managed to take most of the damage, though his sternum was bruised and could have cracked with another hit. He has a concussion and a broken arm, but the healing pod will have him out soon.”

They all nod. At least that’s something. There’s more quiet while Keith can’t seem to take his eyes off Lance’s unconscious form in the pod. He’s done a lot of thinking in those twelve hours, hours that most of the others used to sleep away the distress and soothe their aches, but Keith was unable to sleep and almost didn’t want to. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the glowing ones in Lance’s sockets sitting over a sharp smile that shone white in the dim of his nightmares.

“We can’t just keep him this way,“ Shiro says, “like he’s a prisoner.”

“Right now, he is,” Keith says, firm. “Until we figure this out and get him back to normal, what choice do we have, Shiro? You saw how strong he was, how _fast_. He knocked me unconscious, he took down Hunk, and Hunk is a _tank_. And did you forget that he _almost killed Pidge?_ Whatever they did to him in there, it makes Lance dangerous.”

Shiro finds a soft anger rising up inside him. “You’re the same way, aren’t you?” he says, perhaps too harshly. “You have Galra in you, too. I thought you out of anyone would understand his perspective.”

“I’ve been able to keep it at bay,” Keith argues. “But you haven’t, have you, Shiro? You have episodes. You relapse, you don’t remember things, you get confused. And what those Druids did to you is _really damn similar_ to what they’ve done to Lance. Sure, it’s only in his head this time, but that’s where it’s worst. We can’t _trust_ him, Shiro.”

“Both of you, that’s enough,” Allura interjects, stern. “We’re keeping Lance here for the time being until his levels grow stable. The cuffs are precautionary measures because only _one_ of you was able to tell the fake Lance from the real one.”

Pidge glances down at their feet.

Allura turns off her tablet with a sigh, letting some of the universe’s weight off her shoulders because she’s allowed to be a little selfish. “In the meantime, rest up. Get better, keep training, go about your days as usual. We’re already down two paladins — we don’t need anyone else incapacitated.”

Shiro frowns. “But—”

“ _Dismissed_.”

The group pauses, then nods, and Shiro offers a quiet, “Yes, Princess.” They file out of the hall and the lights along the corridor begin to dim. As it becomes silent in the hall, Keith can now hear the dull thrum of the pod carefully drawing evil out of Lance’s body. He stays behind for a little while to watch. Lance’s face is slack and calm save for the slight knit of his brows that Keith can only spot if he gets up to the glass and looks closely.

Still, somehow, it’s comforting to see him sleep more than anything else.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked me if I have an update schedule — because my personal schedule is unpredictable, I'm just writing whenever I have time to. Unless I get swamped, you won't have to wait longer than a week! Sorry for the irregularity :')
> 
> Also, if you're looking for mood music for this fic, I've been listening to [Control by Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q) pretty much nonstop.
> 
> Additionally, huge HUGE thank you to hirnatoki on tumblr for [drawing me a thing](http://hirnatoki.tumblr.com/post/147213619284/)????? Holy crow. I'm still so moved. so blessed. I don't deserve this, god, thank you. <3 <3 <3

Hunk doesn’t hesitate to ask about Lance once he’s out of the healing pod. After getting him something to eat and casting his arm in a sling — it still needs some time, but he’s now free to be awake for that — the team decides to show rather than tell. They bring Hunk to the pod where Lance has been asleep for, by now, at least twenty-four hours. He hasn’t moved once, thanks to the pod keeping him in stasis, and there’s been no change to his condition other than the traces of Galra slowly inching down by percentage.

Hunk stares at Lance until the pod’s glow hurt his eyes. It seems like it’s only been minutes since Lance attacked him, and the look on Lance’s face in his recent memory still sends a shiver down his spine now and again.

“What _happened?”_ Hunk says quietly.

“We’re still not sure,” Allura offers. “The Galra did something to him. We’re just trying to reverse it.”

Shiro and Pidge sit together at the opposite wall, using the light from one of the unused pods. Pidge is hard at work on Shiro’s cybernetic arm — tools are scattered messily around Pidge’s knees and their brow is knit with concentration, but not the calm kind. Hunk can see Shiro wince now and again, though he doesn’t make a show of it. Probably for Pidge’s sake.

Hunk swallows, tasting the goo they fed him earlier. It didn’t go down well at first, and strangely he wasn’t hungry. More the opposite — he felt like he’d done fifty loops in one of the lions with Lance at the helm, ready to throw up even though, when he’d woken up out of the healing pod, there’d been nothing in his stomach.

At first, when he’d come out, he wanted nothing more than revenge on the Galra for targeting Lance. The Galra have already done a list of unspeakable things, only a handful of which Team Voltron has been able to alleviate, but this one’s _personal_ , dammit, and it sends doses of anger into his bloodstream. Hunk has just enough optimism still in him to be thankful that the Galra didn’t simply kill Lance, but the pessimism is there, bubbling, reminding him that this is still fucking bad and he _hates_ it.

Now, as he actually gets a good look at Lance after everything, a strange feeling washes over him that he’s never had toward his best friend.

Fear.

Anxiety.

Agitation, an itching sensation at the back of his neck that crawls. Lance tried to kill him. Hunk knows it wasn’t really Lance, he _knows_ , but all the same it wore Lance’s face and it used Lance’s body and it will be _Lance_ that haunts his dreams for nights to come.

He jumps just a hair when a hand falls on his shoulder. Keith, who quickly apologizes.

“Can you tell us what happened?” he says. “That might give us some clues.”

Hunk turns to face the others because he needs a break from looking at Lance.

“I was with him gathering the prisoners, like we were supposed to. He didn’t leave my sight until… until we got separated in the hall. He went another way to take out any soldiers that could’ve been down there, and then he was going to come back to me. He went alone. And then he…” Hunk swallows. “He yelled, I heard him fire some shots, and then he was gone. I wanted to go after him, fuck, I _should’ve_ —”

“It’s okay,” Allura offers. “You would have been leaving the prisoners vulnerable, and that would have jeopardized the whole mission.”

“ _Lance_ jeopardized the whole mission, and it’s _my_ —”

“Hunk,” Keith says, soft but firm. “What happened after that?”

Hunk nods, feeling the nausea return ever so slightly. “Okay,” he says, to — what, calm himself? “Okay, okay. So after that I was working on getting the prisoners to the pod before I went back for him. And then I found him, and he looked totally fine. No scratches, no bruises, it was _weird_. But… oh god.”

“What?”

“God, that was it,” Hunk says. “He was fine and he was all _chipper_ about it and he said… he said, ‘They just let me go.’ I thought it was suspicious, but… hell, I was just happy Lance wasn’t dead, and we had a mission to get done, so I didn’t think too much about it. That… It was then, after we got separated but before I found him again. That can’t have been more than twenty minutes.”

Allura nods. He can see her taking notes for herself. He glances back at Shiro, who is watching him attentively.

“And after that?” Keith presses. “We lost you after that.”

Hunk _really_ doesn’t want to relive it, but… he has to. For their sake, and Lance’s. He takes a deep breath.

“So we’re heading back to the pod, right? And we get to a room where we find more Galra soldiers, and I was nervous because Lance said his bayard had been damaged, so I was the only one who could fight. I got mine out, ready to mow them down so we could keep moving, but… Lance suddenly pulls out a freaking _sword_. Like yours, Keith, but blue. I didn’t even know we could change our bayards.”

Keith nods, and _Ah_ , Hunk thinks. _He already knows._

“Normally, you can’t,” Allura responds. “The bayard customizes itself to the user. My guess is… because Lance was technically a different user, because he’d been changed, the bayard changed with it.”

“That’swhy he kept saying it was damaged,” Pidge says from the floor. “He didn’t want anyone to pick up on the fact that he wasn’t Lance.”

“We were lucky Pidge managed to realize something was off,” Allura says.

Hunk mentally thanks Pidge for that, because he realizes that waking up to this is infinitely better than waking up to find the rest of the team dead. Or, well, not waking up at all.

“So I looked over at Lance,” Hunk continues, “and his eyes were yellow, like Sendak, like Zarkon… like they’d possessed him. And he was _strong_ , holy crow, he managed to flip me over his shoulder and then he broke my arm and tried to stab through my armor.” He shakes his head, absentmindedly touching his chest. “That’s when I passed out.”

Keith nods. “I must have come nearly after that,” he says. “Because I’m surprised he would have kept you alive, unless he thought you were dead.”

“ _Keith,”_ he groans.

“Sorry,” Keith says, coughing once. “And Lance?”

“Yeah,” Hunk breathes, almost shuddering. “Lance, he was… terrifying. Like he was cold, but bloodthirsty, like he was excited to hurt me. I can’t… I couldn’t _believe_ he’d do that.”

“None of us can,“ Shiro says. “But hopefully we can find a way to get the real Lance out again.”

Hunk nods dumbly. He wants that, knows it would make him feel much better, but even briefly recalling the experience has him turning away from the pod. Hell, he’s going to be fucked up for a while.

Allura’s the one to break the brief silence. “In the meantime, on future missions I’ll pilot the Blue Lion.”

Coran, who has been quiet up until now, lets out the strangest, loudest, most indignant sound. “Allura, _no_ , not happening, nope, nope, never—”

“Coran, _please_ ,” she sighs.

“No! Princess, absolutely not. It’s far too dangerous! We _need_ you up here in the ship where it’s safer, not out in battle where you could get killed!”

“Would _you_ prefer to pilot it, Coran?” Allura fires back, satisfied by the pissy, reluctant look she gets from him in response. “It’s the only way. We need to keep using Voltron, or else we’re defenseless and Zarkon’s empire will do as it pleases with nothing to stop them.”

“Allura’s right,” Shiro says. “We need to do what we can until we have Lance back with us. Who knows how long that will take.”

Coran groans. “I don’t like this,” he mutters to himself. “What would King Alfor say…”

“My father isn’t here,” Allura says, and that’s all she needs to. She holds herself tall, has to, bringing back her shoulders, but Hunk can see the weariness in them in the way they sink just a little.

In times like these, when the others are down, Hunk normally does everything in his power to get them to smile. He cooks, seasons Coran’s food until it resembles something close to Earth food, puts on the multiplayer video game Pidge programmed up, gets them all onto the training deck to sweat out their feelings. But Hunk has no energy. He’s exhausted like he’s run a marathon around the solar system, like he’s been shot out of the airlock and left to float around in space, powerless.

He flexes his hands, one of which sits at his chest in the sling, and realizes, fuck, he can’t even _hug_ the tension out of anyone else, let alone himself.

 

~

 

Keith sheds his jacket and drinks a full bottle of water to swallow down the dread before he starts.

At a short verbal command, the training deck hums to life. It gleams bright in the way that makes Keith forget what time it could possibly be, which is a comfort: alone, Keith can lose himself in training, immerse his body in the fight and ignore how much time has passed, his mind numbed away from their living constructs of reality. Nowadays, he only ever knows it’s “night” when everyone else is asleep. But Keith is not. Far from it.

While the room takes its time to boot up, Keith stretches out his arms and legs. Tugs one arm over his head, leans, then tugs the other. Twists his upper body to crack the kinks in the small of his back. Holds a leg behind himself, then the other, touches his toes, already beginning to feel the warmth of imminent sweat gathering at his hairline.

Lance always made fun of him for stretching before training.

Keith shakes the thought out of his head and gets his bayard ready.

“Start training level four,” he says. He usually sticks to level three, but he needs the distraction.

A port opens from the ceiling and the gladiator drops down to the floor, not wasting any time to dart in and strike. Their swords clash again and again, and Keith feels the strain in his arms whenever they connect, his bayard vibrating with the gladiator’s strength. But it feels good, that burn, one that shakes him to the core and pushes him harder. Especially with the gladiator set on a higher difficulty level, Keith can’t focus on anything else even if he wants to. All he can do is retaliate.

Strike, dodge, parry, dodge, strike, rinse and repeat even as he’s out of breath and his body is starting to slow. But to push just past the brink is to become stronger — that’s what he always tells himself, willing his tired muscles to catch up with his slightly less tired brain.

Lance gets up close, grinning madly, and Keith barely manages to parry before he dodges and rolls out of the way.

Lance— _the gladiator_. He’s at the training deck. Fighting the gladiator. It’s a simulation. A robot. And the gladiator, silent and unforgiving, does not let up even if Keith is confused. It goes in for another hit and Keith counters, breathing heavy, finally feeling the exhaustion seep into him when he doesn’t want it, and every other time he blinks he sees Lance at the other end of his sword, striking his sword with blow after blow. His eyes wash over yellow, gleaming and wide, while the smile splits Lance’s face until it no longer seems human and when his teeth show they’re thick, sharp, Galran, stained with _blood_ —

The gladiator throws him down onto the floor and Keith nearly passes out, but he blinks out of it and chokes out, desperate, “ _E-end training sequence!”_

The gladiator stops. Keith doesn’t care what else it does as he groans and pants heavily on the floor. His body thrums, hot and painful, which tells Keith that he’s gotten his exercise, until he realizes it’s not the usual muscle strain and bodily exertion, he’s _shaking_. He rolls to his feet and runs back to the entrance for his jacket so he can go home, return to his room, except his legs won’t carry him the rest of the way and he has to stumble for the nearest wall before his knees give out entirely. He puts his back to the wall and slides down and gasps out a tattered “holy shit” before he’s lapsing into hyperventilation.

So this is what Shiro feels like when he relapses. When he suddenly remembers his torture and blanks out from the world around him, lost in a memory he might do anything to erase from his head. His chest squeezes tight and it’s something awful, like he’s drowning when there’s plenty of air around him to breathe but he can never catch enough of it.

Keith concentrates on a spot on the floor, a T-shaped groove that he traces with his eyes. Back and forth, up and down, turning the corner… His breathing slows. The panic is still there, lingering under his skin, but maybe it always will be. It’s enough, for now. He gathers up his bayard and heads out of the training deck after shutting it down.

Sure, Keith could have easily hurt Lance back in that cursed Galra ship, if he’d really tried. He wouldn’t have, no matter how much he jokes about hurting Lance and no matter how much not-Lance teased it on himself, threatened not just Lance but the obligation to care that exists in all of them. That obligation is what keeps Team Voltron together. It’s their code. Lance, the Galra, the Druids, all put a knife up to the gut of it and changed the game.

But beyond all that, Lance could have killed him and almost did. It’s a miracle, really, that they managed to survive it, given the ruthlessness and disregard of their brainwashed fellow paladin. Keith is here right now, even if he doesn’t quite feel like it, but he could easily be dead if things had gone differently. He could have been killed and then Lance could have gone on to finish off Shiro and Pidge or even gained their trust and boarded to take out Allura and Coran. Worse, Keith had almost failed — no, not almost, _had_ failed — to protect Hunk. Hunk, who out of all of them never asked for any of this and didn’t deserve it one bit. Keith would have been responsible for that.

But then Keith remembers Lance himself. What about Lance? Lance who was under Galra control, Lance who had no idea what he was doing — he thinks. With Lance still under, they can’t hope to understand what went on in his mind that made him turn on his team. And with Lance _still_ under, they have no idea how he feels.

To lose control of your body, your mind, your words… He can’t begin to imagine what that’s like for someone like Lance who prides himself on his own freedom.

Keith doesn’t even realize he’s walking to Lance’s pod until he’s there, suddenly, wondering where he took a wrong turn. But he pauses. Stays. It soothes and sickens him simultaneously to see Lance in stasis. Allura still hasn’t told them when it will be time to wake him up, but he assumes she’ll wait until the DNA percentage rests far lower than it’s at now. He checks the number: forty-six.

Because he knows he won’t be able to sleep when he gets back anyway, Keith sets up camp across the way and sits against the wall. He draws his knees to his chest and pulls his jacket over them. The Galra DNA seeping up into the pod’s ceiling, incrementally leaving the blue paladin’s body, is hypnotizing to watch.

He doesn’t intend to fall asleep there until morning, but he does, and he needs it.

In the morning, he’s awoken by the undeniable sound of Lance’s pod going critical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fight party on twitter @ queerschtein hmu


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for this super dialogue-heavy chapter :( It'll ease up and slow down in future chapters, I swear,,
> 
> Thank you for reading so far!

Allura arrives quickly in bedclothes, her nightgown fluttering with her urgency as she rushes over to join Keith. “What’s going on?” she demands, but Keith seems just as baffled as she is, blinking the sleep away from his eyes as his jacket lies in a heap at his feet.

“I-I don’t know, I was just— I feel asleep here, and I woke up to this,” he says.

The pod before them, once a soft glowing teal as Lance slept, now blares its siren and bathes Lance in a blinding scarlet. He doesn’t move, still in stasis, but the screen beside the pod is flashing strings of Altean and Allura suddenly puts it together. She rushes for the screen, fingers flying over the keys.

Keith approaches the pod as though he fears it may self-destruct with Lance inside it, though knowing his record, he might easily dive in to pull him out first if needed. “Allura, what’s happening?”

She worries at her lip. “It’s just as I feared.”

They should have known this procedure would be too dangerous. They knew, but only to the extent of Altean physiology. With Lance’s human body… It stands to reason that he would be unlikely to survive. But she should have _known_ , curse it all, should have made the better call instead of running a test so sensitive.

The rest of the team finds their way in, alert bodies chasing away any sleepiness leftover from the night. Coran runs through them all to join Allura at the screen.

“Oh,” he murmurs. “Oh no.”

“Allura,” Hunk says, and she turns to see his eyes wide and shiny. “Is he dying? Is Lance dying? Please tell me he’s fine, please just—”

“I’m trying everything I can,” she says.

“Well _try harder!”_

Allura grinds her teeth as she tunes him out, but her ears still manage to pick up his panic.

“Hunk,” Shiro offers, “let Allura do her job. Lance is going to be okay.”

“Do _not_ tell me it’s going to be okay!” Hunk snaps, turning his glare now to Shiro, fists clenched. “It’s not okay, it’s not _fucking_ okay, Lance is going to _die_ if we don’t do something _—_ ”

“If you think there’s anything else we can do, then do it,” Pidge snaps right back at him. “But if not, we just have to wait.”

Hunk freezes, stunned. But he returns his gaze to Lance’s pod, his expression now washed with hopelessness. Keith steps forward and takes Hunk’s hand in a comforting gesture, his own fingers dwarfed in Hunk’s dark ones, yet none of them have seen the yellow paladin appear so small, fragile, breakable. “Allura,” Keith says, “if you can tell us anything. Please.”

Allura feels a hand at her back — Coran, who looks her over with sympathy. He knows, too, what they’re up against, and knows too how difficult this will be to manage. They’re in over their heads on this one, trying to undo Druid magic, hoping to meddle with things they don’t understand. Allura and Coran are behind ten thousand years, but only now does she truly _feel_ how behind they are while the Galra are sailing lightyears off and laughing at them up ahead.

Faintly distracted only by the pod’s red flash that lights up the corner of her eye, Allura turns to the others. Shiro, a fearless leader who now fears losing a close comrade that only ever looked up to him. Keith, who Allura has never seen so concerned for Lance, wearing a deep violet sorrow. And Pidge, Pidge and Lance who have grown to be something like siblings during their time here, seems as though they’re trying to remain strong for the rest. Such a heavy burden on such small shoulders. They’re all staring at her expectantly, but it’s Hunk’s expression that is perhaps the worst to witness. Despair for, of what she knows, a lifelong friend.

What can she tell them?

That Lance is ticks away from death?

Allura sets her expression with determination and her hair swings heavily as she whips back to the pod and lets her fingers fly across the screen.

She won’t let that happen.

Coran, however, takes her shoulder now. “Allura, you can’t! We don’t know if he’s—”

“Do you have any better ideas?” she snaps.

“Allura, please tell us what you’re doing,” Shiro says. “We’re in the dark here.”

She presses a few more keys; she has to work fast but she also has to do this correctly. “The procedure we have him in, to get the magic unwoven from his DNA, is killing him. It’s been killing him slowly, all this time. I thought he could handle it, but…” Allura shakes away the guilt, at least for now. “We have no choice but to get him out of there and out of stasis.”

On the screen, all other keys fall away to leave one large circle and a smaller one. _Go_ or _Cancel._ Allura’s hand poises over the large one, taking a deep breath, ready.

“And _I’m_ saying that getting him out is dangerous,” Coran says to the others, pointedly at her.

“We can figure that out later, Coran.”

Coran wildly shakes his head. “But we have no idea if he’s still under control, if we’ll be able to contain him in any other place! Princess, think about this.”

“If we don’t get him out now, Lance _will_ die,” Allura fires back.

Keith leaves Hunk’s side and appears behind the Alteans, a frown settled into his features. “There’s no time,” he says, slamming his hand on the trigger, making the decision for all of them.

The Galra-pink flow slows to a stop, fading up into the ceiling, and the pod opens with a hiss. Coran’s shoulders sink with worry, though Allura gets the slight feeling that he’s glad neither of them did it themselves. A low fog curls out along the floor in a chill that sweeps over their feet. The six of them wait with bated breath and careful anticipation.

Finally, Allura steps into the pod and reaches around Lance to pull the tubes from his back. She wipes a few specks of blood from the injection sites, though his white med-suit seals them over quickly, and places a hand on his chest to feel for his human heartbeat.

Hunk gets impatient. “I-is he okay?”

“I feel a pulse,” she says. “It’s slow, but it’s there.”

The shared relief is enough to be felt tangibly by all of them. Keith leans against the pod screen, and Allura can see a slight quiver to his mouth when she looks closely. She steps back and takes Lance’s face into her hands. His body remains limp and his hair sweeps low as his head hangs forward until she nudges it up just so.

“Lance. Can you hear me?” she asks. “Say something.”

It seems like yet another ten thousand years before Lance’s eyes flutter open, a slight peel of his lids. They lie unfocused. His fingers twitch. He takes in a slow breath. His lips are dry.

He blinks slowly and croaks, “I didn’t know you were into bondage.”

The team collectively sighs.

“Oh my god.”

“Yep, that’s Lance.”

“Is that seriously the first thing out of his mouth? Really?”

“Dude, I’m just glad he’s okay. I swear, I was going to have a heart attack.”

Allura snorts and lets herself smile, this one time, for a comment that would normally have her twisting his ear. “It’s good to have you back,” she says.

She reaches out of the pod to press a switch that retracts the restraints from his body. He steps down and Allura catches him, noticing his legs are unsteady and buckle underneath him. “It’s like how we first met, isn’t it? Only reversed,” she says with a soft laugh, and it tugs a small smile out of Lance who clings to her, weak, until he musters enough strength to stand on his own.

Lance lifts his gaze to hers, warm and sweet and tired.

It doesn’t last long before his hands are fast closing around her throat.

She hears the others shout but their words don’t register in her ears, swallowed by the rushing sound of her own rapid heartbeat. His thumbs are pushing deep and harsh into her skin, cutting off her airway, a choking sound escaping her mouth as her breath leaves her. She finds her feet lifting off the floor as Lance holds her up and she hangs by his hands, her own scrambling and clawing at them uselessly while she kicks her legs. She forces her eyes open and down, seeing his yellow and gleaming glare, a wicked smile curling his lips.

And then the pressure is gone. Allura drops to the floor as Keith and Pidge dive into the small space and wrestle Lance off of her, back to the wall, so that Shiro can press the switch that once more locks his body in place.

Coran helps Allura out of the pod and to her feet while she massages her throat, coughing and wheezing, shaking enough to have Coran wrapping his arms around her shoulders for something to hold onto. And she does, dropping her head forward. _Get a grip, Allura_ , she thinks, but all the same the sensation of his fingers wrapped around her neck is one that lingers.

“Are you all right?” he asks her. She gives him a short nod. She’s not, but in his terms, a yes is enough.

In the pod, Lance growls and snaps his teeth once and strains against the cuffs. He settles, accepting his fate but angry about it, brows set tight and lip curled into a sneer. His eyes flit over the others, soaking them all in. They’re pissed and on the defensive, but they’re also nervous, scared. He laughs under his breath.

“You think you can save him?”

“Don’t listen,” Shiro says.

Lance smiles. “That’s cute.”

Shiro gives Lance a stern look and beckons everyone to the opposite wall. Coran guides Allura over. She takes a few ticks to just breathe, easing her throat back open. The team clusters together. They’re unable to help but notice that Hunk stands rigid, sort of unseeing and not very responsive. He hadn’t moved when Lance attacked Allura. The chaos must not have sat well with him.

“I told you all, he’s still very dangerous,” Coran whispers. “It’s risky just to keep him awake.”

“What should we do, put him in stasis again?” Shiro argues.

Keith nods. “That might be our only option. If we can’t use this procedure to get all that… that _stuff_ out of him, keeping him in stasis will buy us time to figure out what else we can try.”

“So we’re just going to stir up a cocktail of different attempts until we find out what works?” Pidge says. “That’s experimentation, Keith. We do that and we’re no different than the Galra.”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“We can’t keep Lance in stasis without a plan,” Allura says finally. Her voice is a little shot, raspy with exertion. “The longer he’s under, the harder it will be to extract Druid magic if we’re not taking it out. And right now, taking it out is going to be impossible if we want Lance alive.”

“It’s still in him,” Keith responds. “That number was at forty percent, last time I checked. That’s not nearly enough, as we _clearly_ saw just now.”

“But any other procedure available to us is no safer than the one we’ve been using,” Allura says. “This one… perhaps it was too much constant exposure for him. We can try taking it out of him in doses… Coran, what do you think?”

Coran rubs at his mustache. “I think… given his most recent attack on you, Princess, it may be best to keep him awake so we can observe him in real time. Numbers won’t be enough to judge just how much the magic is influencing his actions.”

“In the meantime, we can talk to him,” Pidge says. “See what he knows.”

“Even if he does talk, we can’t trust him.”

Shiro sighs. “Anything is better than nothing, Keith.”

“But he could _easily_ lead us into some kind of trap.”

“There’s not much he can do while he’s restrained,” Pidge points out.

“Don’t tell me he can’t do much, he led us into _trap after trap_ on that Galra ship.”

“Guys?”

The group startles, and Allura feels ice creep up her spine with the voice that filters weakly out of the pod. It carries a different note than the one they all heard moments ago, but all the same her throat throbs, still sore and red from merciless hands.

Lance’s head rolls off the wall. He winces and squints from the light overhead and lets out a groan like he’s got a horrible migraine. He attempts to move his arms, to little effect. “Hey, why… why am I in here? This isn’t the healing pod… Didn’t we used to keep Sendak in this thing?”

Hunk steps forward, finally speaking. “Lance, is that really you?”

“What the quiznak— of _course_ it’s me, dude.” Confusion flits across his face and it deepens, suddenly, with concern. “What— Hunk, what happened to your arm?”

The relief on Hunk’s expression is washed off so soon. He flinches, averts his eyes, and holds his arm close to him. It’s easy to see that he’s reliving it in his head.

“Lance,” Shiro says. “What do you remember?”

Lance frowns. He’s still studying Hunk with quiet desperation. “Um, I… Last I remember, we were on our mission, to… hell, what were we doing? Rescue? And… Hunk was with me. We got separated, and they— the Galra grabbed me.”

“And after that?” Shiro presses. “Do you remember where they took you?”

Lance shakes his head, but he’s still looking at Hunk whose gaze is glued to the floor. “Nothing. I don’t remember anything.”

Keith takes the initiative to fill him in on most of it. That the Galra did something to Lance to make him switch sides, violently so. That Lance attacked him, went after Pidge, damaged Shiro’s arm, and that Pidge was able to take him down. That just now Lance had attempted to choke the life out of Allura, even though Allura waves her hand and says she’s fine. That, before everything else, Lance had broken Hunk’s arm, knocked him out, tried to stab him through. Perhaps it’s because the others’ injuries, external or internal, are less visible. Possibly it’s because Hunk could have been killed. Or maybe it’s because out of anyone, it’s always been Hunk and Lance, Lance and Hunk, partners in crime, friends til the end, and Lance doesn’t remember a thing about what he did to ruin all of that. But it’s hearing about the fact he nearly murdered Hunk that seems to distress Lance the most, Lance who now stares at his best friend, for once in his life nearly speechless.

“Hunk?” he says softly. “I did that to you? Hunk, it wasn’t me.”

Hunk visibly swallows, glances at Lance, turns to leave the hall, and Lance _whines_ as he watches him go.

“Hunk, it wasn’t me,” Lance says again, louder this time. He struggles uselessly against his restraints. “I-it wasn’t me! I’m sorry!”

“Let him go,” Shiro says. “Lance, we’re just trying to recover. All of us.”

Lance whips his head back to slam it against the wall while he bites his lip. It looks like a punishment. His chest shudders with his breathing.

“So I’m in here because you're trying to fix me, but it's not really working, and none of you trust me,” he summarizes. He thinks for a moment, helpless, and his brows rise just a bit with defeat. “That’s fair.”

Allura looks to the remaining four. “We should give him some time to process,” she says. “And _I_ am going back to bed.”

“Princess, you should head to the med bay—”

“Coran, I am going to bed.”

There’s nothing more to be said about any of that. Allura closes the pod door and watches it slide shut and cloud Lance in muted teal. The tension is thick as they all leave but it seems to stay behind with Lance, wafting about him, persistent. His hands flex as he presses himself back against the wall in the temporary prison of his pod, regretting choices he’d had no ability to make for himself, and he seems to think that he deserves this.

That for all he’s done, outside of his own control and unable to trust his own mind and body, he only has himself to blame when he’s alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a bit longer than the rest. Enjoy! :)
> 
> Also, shoutout to @transmurdock on twitter for their [dark!Lance artwork](https://twitter.com/transmurdock/status/755885581406732289)! I'm still blown away by all the artistic talent we've got in this fandom, A+++

Lance can’t stand the silence, but the silence never lasts for long.

At least the wall he’s propped on is slanted back so he can have some semblance of rest. It’s anything but comfortable. Still, for a couple of days at least, they believe it’s better than letting him roam his pod unsupervised until they can figure out how to fix him, and he sort of understands, since all the stuff he’s done that’s gone from his head has them fearful of the power that hides in his tall, lanky body.

It’s a body that feels foreign to him, especially now that he can’t move under the restraints. He has to move what he can to keep himself sane. Wiggle his feet with anxiety, bend his knees, lean his upper body forward as much as he can, crack the kinks out of his neck, flex and snap his fingers just to hear _something_ other than his own voice which is now starting to grate on him. _His own damn voice_. Nothing feels right. This isn’t like their distance from Earth, which Lance has felt for months while they’ve formed Voltron, an emptiness that comes with the slow fade of his sister’s harsh laugh and the map of his mother’s wrinkles and the scent of eggs and earthy coffee wafting into his tiny shared bedroom in the morning. He’s not himself, literally — he’s something else now, something alien and disgusting and freakish.

What he feels is uncanny. _Uncanny_. Someone told him a fun fact about that word once. What was it? Lance squints. He tries to think of Earth again, as much as the images and sounds and smells continue to slip from his grasp. _Ah_. That was it. Uncanny in another language…

“ _Unheimlich_ ,” his brain says.

“Thanks,” Lance mumbles.

 _Unheimlich. Un-heimlich._ Literally, _un-homely._ Lance says it to himself a few times, the German rolling strangely off his English-con-Spanish tongue. “Unheimlich, unheimlich, unheimlich.”

It’s funny. (Not really. There’s nothing funny about this.) He’s missed home all this time, only to find another home in space. Now, one home is gone and the other feels…

_Unheimlich._

Uncanny.

Hostile.

He’s not stupid. He can see it in their faces as they pass. The avoidant body language, the dropped gazes. They’re terrified. And Lance, hell, _what about me, huh? I’m fucking tired._ He can’t count the hours, but judging by when they’ve all gone to bed and arisen again, it’s been at least a day and a half since he first woke up.

Sometimes the others visit his pod, quietly sit and chat awhile, crack the occasional joke to try getting another out of him. But they’re not what breaks the silence.

_“Kind of cold in here, isn’t it?”_

Lance flinches and shuts his eyes. “Stop.”

_“They left you in here. They’re not coming back.”_

“Not listening…” Lance mutters, clicking his jaw. It makes his teeth hurt and he remembers how dry his skin has become.

_“They think you’re a monster.”_

“Shut _up_.”

 _“And_ you _,_ ” it says, _“think you can turn me off. This is who you are now, Lance. This is all you need.”_

He stops talking to it, but his own silence only allows the voice to occupy the empty space and fill it with more. Voices, just whispers and low murmurs, overlapping and building in the back of his head like a mess of cobwebs, like cotton filling the crevices of his brain until no room is left to breathe. He shuts his eyes because there’s no point to keeping them open — the thoughts that aren’t his own at times are blinding, distracting every other one of his senses and tugging him deeper and deeper into the water to drown with them.

It all gets so thick that he can’t pick out what they’re saying. Only the suggestions they leave like meager, enticing shrine offerings that touch at him, drag at the goosebumps along his skin with a promising heat that counteracts the pod’s chill, _escape, they don’t like you, you’re a burden, you’ve been selfish but that’s good, kill them all and don’t fail this time,_

A whine escapes his throat and he hits his head back against the wall until the voices peter out and he’s left alone with the cold again.

He finds, with time, that the voices only stay down when he agrees with them.

Hours pass, and Lance wishes they’d just put him back in stasis already. He sleeps at odd times and his migraine is just short of agonizing, a hard throb that hits the temples and eyes and the base of his skull, and he’s even dying for the taste of Coran’s food, just something, anything, to keep him going. To give him hope.

_“It’s hopeless.”_

Every once in a while, Lance faintly realizes that he can’t tell the voices from his own.

Listless, quiet, but conscious: this is how Keith finds him the next morning. It takes a cough from Keith for Lance to finally look up, drag his gaze up from where dark bags sit under his eyes.

“Let me out, man,” Lance mutters, never leaving a monotone. He shakes his hair out of his eyes and his hands open and close, stretching unused muscles. “C’mon, please. I don’t— I never, _never_ wanted to hurt any of you. Just let me out. You don’t even— You can still keep me in the pod if you want, but all this extra…”

Keith eyes him. Lance watches his face go on a subtle journey of emotions that only sit under the surface. The last one, however, settles on a cool anger that makes Lance briefly glance away from Keith. But Keith only continues to stare as he folds his arms.

“Which Lance am I talking to?”

Lance only scoffs. Keith’s nose wrinkles when he gets frustrated and his brows draw together, too, as he waits.

“This isn’t the Lance I know.”

Lance raises his head. He’s not sure exactly what Keith _wants_ half the time, which makes their hallway interactions all the more confusing. Keith is the one he can’t quite figure out. Keith, who seems to want him locked up until they can cure him for good, but also Keith, who, as they tell him, was the one who released him from the pod in the first place. It’s almost like Keith is impatient to get him out, but this is _Keith_. That’s not something Lance can believe, not where Lance is concerned, not at all.

“What the hell do you want me to be, Keith?” he says, exasperated.

Keith’s eyes seem to widen, and for just a moment he appears unguarded. “So it _is_ you.”

“No shit, Space Sherlock.”

“I’m being careful,” Keith says. “You… We’ve mostly got you back, it’s like you’re not even the same.”

Lance snorts. “You miss me or something?”

Keith doesn’t answer, but he opens his mouth only to close it again. Weirdo. Tight-ass. Stubborn asshole, _slit his throat—_

Lance winces, his head twitching forward, and he quickly snaps it back against the wall to get it all to stop. It probably looks fucking strange to Keith, but for now it’s what works, even if his migraine inches further towards a possible self-inflicted concussion every time he does it.

“I’m restrained here,” he says finally, staring at the ceiling he’s already memorized. “Fed by damn tubes, haven’t tasted anything in ages and I’m constantly hungry, I’m _starving_. And fuck _all_ , Keith, they fucked with my freaking DNA, and you all tried to fix it up again, but it’s still there and now I’m stuck until you figure something out.” He takes a breath but he’s not proud of how much it shakes, yet all the same his voice gradually rises. “Would you still be you if everything _you_ was taken away? If you couldn’t move, couldn’t walk around? Had no one to talk to, no one to help you chase the bad shit away? All because the one thing you could ever do, _had_ to do, you’d _failed_ at doing entirely? Fucking _hell_ , Keith, I don’t _need_ —”

A deliberate cough echoes from down the hall.

Hunk. _Hunk._ His excitement spikes naturally only to be shot straight down as Lance remembers how they left it last time. Hunk hasn’t come to visit him in the pod once. Even Keith seems stunned, which tells him Hunk may not have left his room at all in the past two days.

“I-it’s okay,” Keith says to him, his expression suddenly much softer. “You don’t have to come over, Hunk. Take your time.”

Lance can’t see his face too well from a distance, but Hunk stays there for a moment. Then something changes, and he begins to stride towards them. “I’ve had my time,” he says. When he gets closer, he still appears somewhat haggard, his hair messy over tired eyes, but there’s more life in him now.

Hunk doesn’t say anything, which Lance worries about, because with the silence come the voices, so he starts. “Hunk, I’m…”

Hunk holds up a hand to quiet him. He keeps a stern expression and Lance wonders, suddenly, if it’ll ever be okay between them. If they’ll go back to the way things used to be, palling around on the training deck, making experimental goo smoothies, or if there will always be a wall between them now — metaphorically and literally.

Hunk takes a deep breath, and then he snorts into a smile, warm and soft and a little pathetic. “Dammit, Lance, I miss you.”

Lance can’t help the beaming smile that breaks out on his face. Hunk’s words are a reprieve from the constant madness and disquiet, and the relief swells up so large in him that it comes up into his eyes. “Hunk, buddy, I miss you too,” he says, “I miss all of you. God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Hunk says. “I know you had no control of yourself, I just… Everything bad that happened, my brain associated with you, but I think I can separate them now. Just had to remember all the good times, you know?”

Lance wants nothing more than to throw his arms around Hunk and sink into him, find home in the dear space of his best friend. He could kiss him. Here in containment, restrained, he can only nod, a breath shuddering out of him now. But when he glances over at Keith he finds his mouth drawn into a thin line. Keith’s brow furrows and then he leaves, heading down the hall with purpose.

Hunk may be ready, but it’s easy to see that Keith is not.

Whatever. He’s not the deciding factor. Even if his rejection still stings a little.

“I’ll talk to Allura about getting you out of here,” Hunk says. “Or at least out of those cuffs, god, that’s gotta be hell.”

Lance shakes his head with a soft laugh. “Yeah, well…” _I deserve it_ , he almost says. It carries a note of the other voices in his head. He shoves it deep, deep down into places Hunk doesn’t deserve to know about. “Thank you, Hunk.”

He smiles at Hunk but follows Keith’s shrinking form down the hall out of the corner of his eye. Even Shiro, Pidge, Coran, Allura… They’ve all come to see him, talked to him, and now Hunk has placed his trust in him. But Keith still only ever regards him like something stained and out of order, not yet right.

_“You could be even better.”_

Lance knows he’s not right. Not yet.

But he’s trying.

 

~

 

“Hold still.”

“Sorry, this is just…”

“What? Taking a while?”

“I mean, you basically fixed it already.”

Pidge fixes Shiro with a glare. “Sure, I fixed most of the mechanics, but it could be better.”

Shiro gives them a small sympathetic laugh. But his lower back is aching a little, his legs are falling asleep from the knee down, and his shoulders sit rigid from holding his body in a slight hunch. He already trained today and his arm felt all right, so he doesn’t think there’s much of anything for Pidge to worry about. But when Pidge says they’re going to do something, they’ll do it and it’ll take more effort to stop them that’s better spent simply letting them do what they want.

“Don’t you want to take a break soon?” Shiro offers after several minutes. “You’ve been working for a few hours.”

“Yeah, because—” Pidge winces when a strain of Galra energy sparks up like a sun flare. “I am _trying_ to get through to the freaking tech, but all this magic stuff keeps—” Another. Pidge lets out a frustrated snarl, ripping off their glasses and tossing them across the couch. “Shit motherfucker god fucking _ass_ _christ_ I am going to _kill the fucking Galra shitting Empire_ my fucking self and demand they fucking tell me how to _goddamn fix this shitty piece of_ —”

“Whoa there,” Shiro murmurs, then snorts. “You’ll kill them and _then_ ask them how to fix it? How can they help you if they’re already de—”

“I don’t want another _word_ out of you, _Takashi_ ,” Pidge grumbles, grabbing their glasses and getting back to work.

Shiro laughs a little, though once Pidge concentrates he lets his features settle. This has been their routine for the past couple of days: Pidge works on his arm, gets frustrated, throws a few things, lets out a string of curses, and then starts working again. Rinse and repeat, until they’re both tired and little work gets done.

Technically, Shiro’s arm is already fixed. He can use it like a normal hand and accomplish general tasks and even fight with it. It’s only the Galra energy within it that’s been some trouble, though today he was able to summon its weapon with little trouble at all. Little, except for the sharp pain that spikes up to his shoulder when it activates. He has yet to tell Pidge about that part, but Pidge already has enough on their plate.

Shiro fidgets and Pidge growls, holding his arm in place. “Stop. Moving.”

“I’m trying. You sure you don’t need a break?”

“I’m not taking a break, I can’t,” Pidge says, grimacing and twisting some kind of screwdriver into the opening they’ve made for themself at the wrist. “I’m close, almost there, just a little—” A spark flies up again, nearly hitting Pidge’s glasses. “ _Mother—_ ”

“Pidge, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

“Then make a mess. Break something.”

“I’ve already broken enough.”

Shiro pauses. It’s the first Pidge has mentioned doing something wrong. Everything else has been something else’s fault; mostly it’s the arm’s fault, other times it’s the _shitty fucking Galra_ , as they sometimes put it.

“Talk to me,” he says.

“No.”

“Pidge.”

Pidge bites their lip, their hands now slowing to a stop where they’ve got tools in his arm.

“No.”

“ _Pidge_.”

“All right, fine.” Pidge takes out the tools and tosses them to the couch along with their glasses so they can rub at their eyes. “Fine. You want to know what’s wrong? Huh? I know I can’t fix Lance, even though I just want him out, it’s too quiet in the Castle now. Still, I’ve accepted the fact that the whole Lance situation is out of my control. But your arm, it should be my realm, and yet I can’t fix _that_ , either. I’ve been trying, for _hours_ , and sure I got you some movement back, and sure I patched up that huge chunk the sword took out of your arm, but _god,_ beyond that, I can’t fix this.”

“You can,” Shiro says, calm as usual. “I believe in you, Pidge. And if you really can’t? That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”

Pidge frowns, taking up their glasses again and rubbing the lenses clean.

“You can always go to Coran,” Shiro adds. “He said they used to call him the… the Coranic, right? Remember?”

“No,” Pidge mumbles. Their thumb stills along the wide frames. “No, I… It has to be me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s my fault.”

Shiro goes quiet. Pidge puts on their glasses and gets back to work, but Shiro watches their face, the way it’s knit tight with a focus that’s _needed_ as a distraction from all the other gears turning in their head.

“Pidge…”

“ _What_.”

“Look at me. Please?”

Pidge sighs loudly and raises their gaze, still defiant against Shiro’s concern for them. He places his free hand over one of theirs, tugging their fingers off the screwdriver.

“Thank you, for everything you’ve already done. I can move my hand now, which is more than I could’ve said a couple days ago. But you don’t need to blame yourself for it.”

“Yes, I do,” Pidge says. Their jaw clenches tight and they avoid Shiro’s eyes. “Lance threatened me and I couldn’t move. He tried to kill me and I couldn’t _move_. I just stood there like an idiot and then you got hurt because of it—”

“Pidge, I _chose_ to protect you,” Shiro said, squeezing their hand. “In that instant, I had to make a choice, you or my arm. And if I had to make it again, I’d make the same choice. Every time.”

“But—”

“ _Every_ time.”

Pidge swallows, holding back tears. Shiro coaxes them to drop their tools and Pidge seems too weak to fight him when he pulls them into his arms, and they’re trembling, and Shiro perches his chin on their head and strokes their back for a good few minutes until Pidge’s breathing returns to normal.

“Besides,” Shiro says when Pidge pulls away. “It’s only my metal arm. At least this one can be fixed.”

Any progress Shiro has just made begins to drop from their face. Pidge holds his arm in their hands, drifting over each of his fingers.

“But this arm,” they say, lips tight in a frown. “You have sensation in it, don’t you.”

Shiro pauses. Pidge’s hand is tracing his own, and no matter how light their touch is, he feels the gentle drag, the slight warmth that comes off of them, the oil on Pidge’s fingertips. He sighs, unable to avoid answering, and solemnly nods.

“And you felt it?” Pidge says. “When Lance cut into you?”

“I didn’t want you to know.”

Pidge presses their lips together, sinking again, and Shiro can’t bear to see it. Pidge is always so strong, so powerful and intelligent. Pidge took down a team of Galra all by themself, cut off Sendak’s arm, and saved every the whole team. Pidge can hack into almost any computer system with incredible ease. Shiro wants to say all of that aloud, but something tells him that it won’t help; Pidge already knows it and yet still feels like they’re responsible for this particular incident.

“Pidge,” he says, “do you remember the handful of times that _I’ve_ frozen mid-battle?”

“Yeah,” Pidge sniffs. “But you have an excuse, your… PTSD.”

Shiro shakes his head. “Sure, it’s beyond my control when those things happen. But my past trauma shouldn’t be my excuse if I let my team down in the present. Excuses won’t solve anything. Telling yourself, ‘I should have done this, I should have done that,’ doesn’t reverse time like you want it to. So take what you’ve learned and what you have now and work with it.” He gives Pidge a smile. “I know you can. You’ve done it before. Maybe you didn’t move the first time, when Lance attacked you, but you took Lance down for good when he was about to hurt himself and all of us. You _saved_ us, Pidge, and this isn’t the first time. I think that more than makes up for it.”

After a long pause, Pidge finally smirks. “You all owe me a ton of ice cream, then,” they retort. “Space ice cream.”

Shiro chuckles and reaches over to ruffle Pidge’s hair. “Space ice cream,” he says, “with star sprinkles. Or we could just freeze some green goo and see if it’s close.”

“Ew,” Pidge’s nose wrinkles, “absolutely not.”

While Pidge attempts more work on Shiro’s arm, they talk about their favorite ice cream flavors — Shiro’s are classic strawberry and any good coffee combo and Pidge says that’s lame, obviously mint chocolate chip and peanut butter swirl and rocky road are indisputably the best, but strawberry and coffee are okay, _I guess,_ but then Shiro tells Pidge all about the gari gari ice pops he gets whenever he visits Japan, and it makes them both miss Earth and forget about space and the Galra and their missions just for the moment, and they argue over whose taste is superior into the late hours of the evening.

 

~

 

“Having fun, Hunk?”

Hunk snorts a small laugh. “What are you on about?”

“I mean, at least…” Lance shrugs. “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t enjoy this just a little bit.”

“It’s nice, I guess, sometimes.” Hunk smirks. “I know we do this selflessly and all — hell, at least I do, I don’t know about _you_ , man—”

“Hey!”

“But, like… Saving people. We don’t do it so we can feel good, but it _does_ feel good.”

Lance smiles at him. “ _And_ we get to stick it to the man. Or, you know. Galra.”

“All right, all right,” Hunk says. “I— Shh. I hear… Someone’s coming.”

Lance perks up. “I didn’t hear anything.“

“Oh, _quiznak_ , they’re here.” Hunk’s brow furrows and he summons his bayard and moves to take most of them down. “I’ve got you, buddy, just stay behind me!”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

_stop_

_leave him alone_

_he doesn’t deserve this_

Lance’s body doesn’t listen to him. He summons his bayard, but the form it takes it not his usual gun — it’s a sword, like Keith’s, but rippled, wrong. Lance desperately claws for mastery over himself and only manages to get his newly dominant left hand to shake and hesitate ever so slightly, but his effect on it doesn’t last long. It regains control, gripping tighter to the hilt.

_Hunk, run_

_HUNK_

_RUN_

He can’t move, can’t speak on his own. He feels like a puppet the way his body and mind and voice are manipulated, an alien in his own skin, talking and laughing and jibing with Hunk, _No, I wouldn’t say that. Wait, would I?_ and he tries to shake his head, but nothing happens, only a slight twitch that manifests out of his desperation. He feels every slide of cloth and skin when he throws Hunk forward over his shoulder, a newfound power in his muscles, Hunk seeming lighter than air until he crashes to the ground on his back. He feels every snap of Hunk’s bone in his grip and every vibration of Hunk’s scream hitting his ears, and a hunger runs through him that he tries to despise with every fiber of his being but instead he _loves_ it, wants _more,_ and so he drops Hunk’s arm to the floor and twirls his bayard and thinks, gleefully, of how best to kill his friend and decides, standing over him, that maybe he should die with Lance as the last image he sees, Lance murdering him in cold blood. He feels his lips curve into a wicked smile and the weight of Hunk’s confusion and heartbreak below is _raw_ and _glorious_.

_please_

_please don’t, take me instead_

_i’ll do anything_

_stop, don’t_

_don’t_

_let him live_

_don’t_

_let him live_

Something tugs Lance deeper to the ocean floor until he’s numb.

_don’t let him live_

The Galra soldiers around them watch as Lance lifts his sword and brings it down,

 

Lance gasps awake and jolts upward with a shout, his body painfully stopped by the restraints around him. It’s the sensation of metal digging into his wrists and ankles that grounds him, reminds him of where he is. Still, he shakes, desperately gasping for breath. He swallows but his mouth is dry. He remembers the desert. The beach. The heat of the sand sliding hot under his toes and bearing down on his shoulders to turn them darker and freckled. The unbearable glint of the sun overhead.

He grasps for the memories but he doesn’t feel any of them. He only feels the chill of the pod, the cold metal against his skin, the air rushing in and out of him that cools his lips on the places where he licked them, aching for something to wash all this down. The cold air around him is the only reason he can tell that he’s crying when he feels a warmth rolling down his cheeks. He breathes, but there’s a shiver to it. He blinks, but it burns.

_“Didn’t it feel good, back then?”_

Lance hears, faintly, the sound of sick laughter and hits his head against the wall until it stops.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got some more fanart from y'all?? Oh my gosh. You sweet readers you!!
> 
> Here's some [creepy dark!Lance](https://twitter.com/annoyedraccoon/status/757288040159150085) by annoyedraccoon @ twitter!  
> And here's some [angsty Lance](https://twitter.com/Fvrancesca/status/757724830837989380) by Fvrancesca @ twitter!
> 
> I can't thank you all enough — all of you readers are the reason I keep writing! <3 <3 <3 Enjoy~!

Keith searches all throughout the Castle, but of course it’s the last place he goes, the laboratory, where he finds Allura crouched and focused on her workstation with Coran standing beside her. Clear canisters sit scattered about the table, some holding a fluorescent rosy substance and others containing a familiar glimmering gold, and Allura has one in her hands, examining it with some kind of eyeglass tool. From the entrance of the lab, Keith can’t make out what she’s saying, but when she turns her gaze to Coran, there’s something solemn in her expression.

Now that he’s here, though, Keith realizes he’s never actually set much foot into the lab before now; mostly because it was always Pidge’s territory, and if any of the other paladins made the mistake of touching of Pidge’s things they wouldn’t go out in the same condition they came in with. Like the rest of the Castle, the lab is lit well and fitted with high ceilings. Several tables span the room, each laden with various pieces of equipment. To Keith’s assumption, they don’t have any of these gadgets on Earth, but even if they did, Keith wouldn’t know what half of them do; though he can guess. At the very least he knows what they’re looking at now.

“Quintessence?” Keith says.

They both turn to look at him. “Keith,” Allura says, straightening her back. “Yes, ah… It actually may be good to have you on this. You've encountered quintessence before.”

“I’m not really a scientist,” Keith warns them but approaches anyway. As he comes closer, he sees one of the devices they’re working with. Round, bowl-shaped, with holes around the top surface like the cartridge cylinders of a pistol. “What is that?”

“I think you’d call it a centrifuge,” Allura says, sliding another couple of tubes into it. She presses the button in the center of the barrel and it starts to spin into a blur. “We’ve been able to take some of the samples from Lance and study them.”

Coran shows Keith one of the finished canisters. Along the bottom sits the Galra pink, thick like sludge; floating at the top, though, weightless, is the glowing yellow quintessence Keith has seen before, in its pure form.

“This is what we’ve managed to extract from him, separated by the centrifuge,” Coran says. “We’re still analyzing it. Might be a while before we figure out how it works, if at all.“

Keith frowns. “But now that you’re positive it’s quintessence, can’t you… target it? Localize it?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Allura says. She sighs, and Keith suddenly sees the shadows under her eyes, the slight mess of her hair out of its usual updo which reveals the still-dark ring of bruises around her neck. Doesn’t seem that she’s slept in a while, understandably. “Quintessence isn’t just a substance, or a chemical. It’s _energy_ , more specifically dark energy, and it’s like it has a mind of its own. It keeps moving, changing, resisting while we’re trying to study it.”

“It’s a mystery to me how the Galra have managed to contain it and use it to their will,” Coran adds. He tapped the canister and the quintessence cloud flickers away from the glass like a startled fish in a tank before curling again, a swirling golden storm.

Keith worries at his lip and absentmindedly picks at a loose thread on his glove. “But can… can you get it out of him?”

“We’re trying,” Allura says. “We’ve got him under the procedure right now, taking some away from him bit by bit, never too much at a time. He’s down to thirty-three percent, last I checked.”

“Good. That means it’s working.”

Coran and Allura both appear somewhat stricken, and at that, Keith feels his heart drop into his stomach, feels the acid eat away at what’s left, barely beating.

“It’s working… right?”

Allura sighs deeply. “I was going to wait to tell everyone all at once, but I suppose I can tell you now,” she says. “It’s… Keith, it’s very likely, no matter how much quintessence we can take out…”

Coran jumps in when it looks like she can’t finish. “Think of it like when you’ve got water in a glass,“ he says. “You can try tipping the glass upside-down to dump out all the water, but even then you’ll always have at least a few drops that stay at the bottom.”

Keith’s gears turn in his head for a moment. “So what you’re saying is, Lance will always have something in him? For the rest of his life?”

The Alteans don’t answer, but their silence is enough. Keith grinds his teeth together, and it’s only his gloves that stop his nails from digging into his palms. He can’t hope to completely understand what Lance is going through, what he _will_ be going through, because what Lance has to endure is not just biological but _psychological,_ too, but Keith can still relate. He can relate to having something new, foreign, different, _violent_ inside him, suddenly, and knowing it won’t ever go away. But goddammit, he’d been desperate to spare Lance from having to know that pain — kept Lance in containment so he could learn how to fight against what was taking him over, proceeded carefully around him so Lance would start to become himself again in retaliation. And sure, half of it was due to being scared, both for himself and for the rest of the team that he’s come to call family, but it’s been for Lance, too. Because as much as Lance grates on his nerves from time to time, Keith would trade anything to have that all again in spades so the Castle could stop being so damn tense and quiet around here.

Even their latest mission using the lions — simple recon, nothing big — was rocky and uncomfortable. Allura piloted Blue, and she was a _fantastic_ pilot and far more experienced than Lance, but hell if they all didn’t come back knowing exactly what was lacking. An empty space that felt all too loud in Keith’s heart.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Coran says, breaking the silence. “We don’t like it any more than you do. And it… well, I feel like I’ve failed him, you know?” He looks down at the floor. “Lance saved my life, the day he pushed me out of the way when that bomb went off in the control room. I owe him a great debt. I wanted to do right by him.”

Keith nods but swallows over the rock in his throat.

Allura decides to change the subject, probably because she’s tired of looking at, talking over, and thinking about quintessence. “Hunk’s better, and I hear he wants to get Lance out. The others are saying the same thing.”

“Yeah.”

She turns to him in her chair and leans back against the workstation table. “And you? I would like this to be unanimous.”

It’s probably this that Keith is the most torn about. Thirty-three percent. Will that be enough progress to let him out? To trust him again? Or will Lance go under again, trick them all, do even worse damage than before? But still, to keep Lance in that pod, tied down… It’s become torturous for him now.

Keith sighs. “At least let him out of the restraints,” he says, “but out of the pod… I’m not sure yet.”

Allura looks him over. He doesn’t like how perceptive she is. “You still don’t trust him.”

“Do you?” he retorts. “You’ve seen what he can do, firsthand. Putting on a façade, tricking all of us, acting his way through.”

“He’s right, Princess,” Coran says to her. “As much as I owe this to Lance… It’ll be risky. It could endanger the team. Already has.”

“I know. I was foolish, before.” Allura hangs her head and drags her hands over her face for a moment, breathing in. “But we have to try, eventually. We won’t know unless we attempt to trust him. Hunk was perhaps the most affected out of all of us, and he did as much, and we have a duty to follow suit.”

Keith folds his arms, unable to help the tightness in his jaw, the clench of his chest when he hears that. He _knows,_ dammit, and can’t stop thinking about that fact. That Keith is the one holding them all back from supposed progress. That even Hunk, with the largest mental hurdle to overcome, was able to do more than what Keith could. “Well,” he says finally, “they’re best friends. Of course…”

Allura stares at him for a long moment. Too long. There’s a hint of a smile on her lips, actually, that’s a little unnerving. “Coran,” she says. “Can I have a moment alone with Keith?”

Coran agrees, bows, and excuses himself from the lab. Allura nods to a nearby stool and Keith takes a seat in it, feeling uncomfortable under her gaze. She crosses her arms and cocks her head just a little and waits for the door to close after Coran before she speaks.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re jealous of Hunk. Am I wrong?”

Keith blinks. Allura looks at him, almost satisfied with her discovery, like, what? like she expects him to burn up red and vehemently deny it? Instead, he sighs and puts his head in his hands and murmurs, “No.” Not wrong.

“Talk to me.”

Keith leans forward, propping his elbows up on his knees and wringing his hands together. This isn’t really something he wanted to talk about, but he supposes if it’s with anyone, it should be Allura. Allura, who’s lived for who knows how long, who seems, perhaps, both the most emotionally stable _and_ the most objective.

“I’m jealous of what Hunk can do,” Keith says. “He can compartmentalize. The ones he likes, at least. He can separate Lance and… _not_ -Lance in his head into two separate entities, and I can’t do that yet. He can read people. He can see what we don’t see on the surface, and he can pass judgments, and he can _trust_ Lance like I can’t, can just take one look at him and _know._ ” He shrugs helplessly. “Maybe it’s just because they’ve been such good friends.”

Allura watches him as he speaks. “I don’t think that’s all it is,” she says. “When we found Rolo and Nyma supposedly stranded and something wasn’t right, who figured out that they were up to no good?”

“Hunk.”

“When we discovered your Galran heritage, who was the first, out of all of us, to trust you, immediately and unconditionally?”

Keith sighs, reluctant. “Hunk.”

“Hunk has _phenomenal_ instincts,” Allura says, offering him a smile. “Maybe you need to get in tune with yours.”

Keith’s brow furrows and he can’t help the slight frown that comes to him. “I thought I already was. I mean, that’s all I ever _do._ ”

Allura chuckles. “That may be true in battle. But with people? In relationships? For trust? Half the ingredients rely on instinct. Maybe you’ve got some work to do, Keith.”

Keith sighs. He doesn’t really have the heart to tell her he doesn’t know if he can do that. It’s not as simple as she seems to think. Instincts aren’t exactly something you can teach, it’s just something you’re born with, and frustration bubbles in him as he realizes he might never be able to trust Lance if he can’t manage his own ability to read people.

He thinks about Lance in that pod, trapped and alone, fighting. Wondering if he’ll ever be free. Desperate to both be with his friends and protect them, and knowing that those two may now be mutually exclusive. Doing his best, anyway, to love them behind a forcefield.

Keith swallows.

If Lance is going to try, against every new fiber in his body, then dammit, so will he.

 

~

 

Lance still feels the slight pressure around his wrists and ankles and waist and against the back of his body hours after they’ve let him out of the restraints. But it’s better than what he had, and he wants to cry with relief. It’s Hunk who visits first to sit and chat excitedly about the fact that they finally found a way for him to communicate with Shay long-distance; it’s only the equivalent of texting, but that’s enough for them. Pidge comes to see him next, and they play cards on the floor with the pod’s door between them. Pidge wins four times, Lance wins two, and normally Lance would complain to the high heavens and be the sore loser he is, but it’s worth it to see Pidge’s triumphant smirk at the end of every victorious round. Allura comes by and they teach her how to play, and even though she doesn’t always seem to understand she still manages to pull a couple wins for herself. Shiro’s talk, alone with Lance, is a little more serious, but he’s glad that Lance at least has some freedom of mobility now. Even Coran checks up on him in the way Lance knows is half-work, half-play, checking his vitals and providing him with sheets and pillows and cushions while cracking jokes and telling him about the old days on Altea. It’s sweetly distracting to hear more about another planet that’s not Earth.

Not once do the voices stop.

They tell him, in his own mental voice, how useless he is. How powerless, how pathetic. That he could be stronger, stronger than ever, stronger than any of them, if he would just let go of himself and his attachments. _“Let go of love. What good is love? Love will not save anyone. Best save yourself and join a prosperous empire.”_ Lance can tune it out most of the time, interrupt the voices by asking one of the others a question and focusing on their words instead of the ones in his head. But the losses he suffers from Pidge and Allura while playing cards occur whenever the voices get so loud that they’re deafening, distracting, and he mindlessly puts horrible cards down without thinking of the consequences because he doesn’t want them to know. He has to smile because they _can’t_ know. He wants them to believe he’s getting better.

They have to.

Late in the night, Lance sits with his back to the pod door. It’s warm with energy, which is a nice contrast to the cold of his cell, even with the blankets strewn over him. He’s not tired yet, but he’s thinking of turning in soon, because the voices have exhausted his mind all day.

“Hey.”

Lance doesn’t have to turn around to know who _that_ voice belongs to.

“Hey,” he parrots.

There’s a pause, hesitation. “Can… Can I sit with you?” Keith asks.

Lance nods. Keith gets down on the floor and puts his back to Lance’s, and even though the door is still alive and buzzing between them, he swears he can feel some kind of push where their spines would meet.

For a few minutes, they don’t talk. They sit in silence together.

_“They’re trusting you. That’s good.”_

_“Make them trust you more.”_

_“Take them down when they least expect it.”_

_“Friends close, enemies closer.“_

Lance shakes his head and tries to focus on his own breathing, but instead he finds himself listening to Keith’s. The air softly filtering in and out of him. The occasional sigh. A swallow, clearing his throat. He latches onto that. It helps.

“Good to see they took the cuffs off,” Keith says.

Lance scoffs. “Yeah. Now I can pick my nose whenever I want.”

“Lance.”

“What? Be grateful. Any longer up there and I would’ve made you do it for me. Your fingers are the longest, I bet you’d get in there _deep._ ”

“ _Lance_.” Keith almost laughs. “ _Gross.”_

Lance snorts, smiling to himself. “You think I’m kidding.”

“You’d better be.”

“Okay, okay.”

There’s another silence. It’s a little awkward. Keith won’t really say anything, like there’s a point he’s trying to get to but can’t because he’s scared or something. It’s a little irritating, but also refreshing. They’re not talking about _it_ , for once.

But avoiding the subject has never been Keith’s style.

“Have you remembered anything yet?”

Lance closes his eyes and shrugs. “Things come in small pieces,” he says. “I get… flashes of stuff. Hallways. Galra soldiers. You guys.”

Keith nods. “What else?”

“Um…” Lance’s breath shakes for just a moment, because remembering means the voices have the power to filter in again. “I sometimes remember feelings, too,” he says, softer. “Like… this hate, this anger, this _vitriol._ I-I…” He hasn’t talked about this with anyone else yet, but something in him suddenly makes him feel as though he has to, with Keith. “W-wanting to see you all. D… Dead.”

He hears Keith inhale sharply. His voice sounds a little strained as he says, “What else?”

Lance can’t seem to stop himself. “A feeling of… allegiance to the Galra Empire. ‘ _Vrepit sa,’_ I remember that. Some… Galran term. Sort of a… ‘Yes, Sir,’ or salute, or something.”

“I’ve heard them say that to each other,” Keith responds, nodding. “Is it… getting better?”

“… Yeah,” he lies.

Keith hums in thought. Lance suddenly gets the sensation that he’s on trial, questioned as witness, victim, _and_ criminal all at once. That Keith may be using all of this to judge him and finally order his sentence.

“I’m… trying,” Keith says.

“Huh?”

“Trying to get over… myself, I guess,” he clarifies, even though Lance is only more confused. Lance feels him shift on the other side of the field. “Trying to… put aside what all this has done to me. The visions. Hallucinations. I can’t train, Lance, not like I used to. I just keep seeing your face. And Hunk, too, he’s still having nightmares. He probably hasn’t told you.”

“Are you trying to get over yourself or are you trying to make me feel better?” Lance snaps. “Because I don’t think either is really working.”

“I just want you to know how it’s been for me,” Keith says. “The truth. All of it.”

“Yeah, well…” Lance sighs forcefully. “Look, I already feel bad enough, okay?”

“Fuck,” Keith mutters. He sucks on his teeth. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Lance chews on the inside of his cheek as the air falls quiet again. He shouldn’t have snapped. Shouldn’t have been harsh. Keith is trying. He’s got an apology ready on his tongue when Keith speaks again.

“How has it been… for you?”

Lance rolls his eyes just a little, only because Keith can’t see him do it. “Take a guess.”

“I know it’s been awful,” Keith says, “but… Look, Lance, they had control of you. And even though we’ve seen it on the outside, how… How do you feel?”

_“You’re_ amplified, _Lance.”_

_“Tell him how good it felt.”_

_“You know it felt good.”_

_“Tell him what it_ really _feels like—”_

“Like I’m drowning.”

Keith doesn’t say anything. Lance shifts, drawing his knees in to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

“Like they’re filling my mouth with words the way water fills your lungs. Like I’m a puppet, just some dead weight to be moved around. Like I…” He shivers. “Like my brain and body aren’t mine anymore, but at the same time they _are_ , how these voices tell me to do things and I don’t just do them, I _want_ to do them. They tell me how worthless I am, how better off I’d be without you all, without Team Voltron, and I _believe_ them even if I tell them they’re wrong.”

Maybe it’s just Lance’s imagination, but he feels Keith go tense behind him through the pod door. There’s a change in his breath. It’s quiet for too long. Lance wonders if he’s blown all his chances of getting out. Hell, he’s just divulged how damn crazy he is in front of the one person he still has yet to win over, who could get him out of here, offer him his freedom.

His eyes well up.

_Fuck_ —

Keith’s words sound uneven as he says softly, “You hear voices?”

Lance clears his throat. He hasn’t told anyone, but he’s backed himself into a corner.

“Yeah.”

“… Are you hearing them now?”

Lance pauses. He drops to a whisper.

“They never stop.”

Keith gets to his feet and Lance wants nothing more than to push his head into his knees and hide. Curl up into a ball, tighter, smaller, until he’s just a speck of nothing, until he disappears, because Keith is leaving, Keith hates him. Keith will never let him out of here. He blinks back tears. He needs to stop Keith, convince him he’s okay, he was just kidding, everything’s fine. Except it’s not, and if he lies, he could hurt all of them. He can’t be that selfish.

But right now, all he needs is one thing.

“Keith, wait,” he says, turning around and standing. “I know, god, I _know_ I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve anything. I’m just being selfish by asking, you can ignore me if you want to, shoot me out the airlock for all I care—”

“What?”

Lance feels himself burning under Keith’s firm but thoughtful, curious gaze.

“I just…” Lance looks away. “The last time I touched any of you, _anyone_ , I tried to kill you. My hands… They _hurt_ , Keith, they _remember it_ , like it’s all muscle memory, a part of me now. And I can’t feel anything else. I can’t remember what it’s like anymore, so…“

Keith only nods pointedly. “Yeah. Um. All right.”

Lance tries not to let his relief show as Keith steps over to the control screen. Lance steps up against the wall and sighs when the restraints close around him once more before the pod door opens. It’s a precaution, he knows. But he’s desperate enough.

Keith steps inside and pauses in front of him. His brow furrows.

“I’m not good at comforting people,” he says.

“Keith, you’re _shit_ at comforting people,” Lance snorts. “You’re like an anti-therapist. People come to you with your problems and you just make them worse.”

“Okay, that’s enough out of you,” Keith pouts. “You want me to do it or not?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” Lance breathes, in and out. “Not like this is weird or anything.”

“You’re the one who asked.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think about how this would work, I just—”

But then Keith suddenly touches both of his hands and Lance sort of gasps, maybe, falters and then sinks and relaxes like a weight has been lifted off of him entirely, the kind of relief all the paladins get when they finally take off their suits after a long mission. It’s a simple, delicate touch, just Keith’s fingers half-hanging in his own, hooking in along the slight curve of them, but they’re so warm, and they’re calloused in some places, soft in others, and Lance never thought holding Keith’s hand would feel this good, but damn if this isn’t the best thing he’s had in what seems like years.

Lance closes his eyes and a shuddering breath leaves him because the voices have pulled back and for once he can’t hear much of anything. Only a muted white noise accompanied by Keith’s soft breathing, the air they share between them. It’s just Keith. Lance, and Keith, and nothing else. For a moment, he’s free.

And then the hands are gone and the absence makes Lance almost whimper after Keith who’s stepping out of the pod. “Keith!” he whines. “Aww, c’mon, man, that’s it?”

Lance nearly trips and falls when the restraints release him and he stumbles, feet hitting the floor again. His heart warms, then _plummets_. _Fuck_. Keith released him, knowing full well that he could still be dangerous. That if the voices took over him again, were loud enough, persuasive enough, able to drown him deep enough, he could kill Keith right here and now before the regret could settle into him.

“No no no,” Lance panics, shaking his head wildly as he steps back and close into the space of the restraints. “No, _Keith_ , what the hell are you doing? You shouldn’t, _close the door_ —”

“Shut up and let me trust you,” he says, right before striding forward and pulling Lance straight into a hug.

The world around him goes still while Lance utterly melts. It’s Lance and Keith, alone just as before, but this time it’s different. This time, Lance feels like he’s floating, as though Keith is lifting him off the ground even though he’s aware of the floor under his feet. Anti-gravity is a powerful, overwhelming thing, but the gravity seems to be gone from his insides, too, his heart and stomach and kidneys all floating inside him, light as feathers. He doesn’t remember when his hands rose up to clutch at Keith’s jacket, but when he buries his nose into Keith’s neck, the migraine simply rolls off of him in one fell swoop.

It takes a moment for Lance to come back to himself.

“Ah…” he says softly. “So… So bony, so cold, not squishy or warm at all…”

Keith squeezes him harder. “You’ll take this hug and you’ll like it, you ass.”

Lance laughs into Keith’s collar. And then he laughs harder, feels it rise up hysterical in him, shakes in Keith’s embrace and laughs uncontrollably until there are tears in his eyes, because the voices are gone and Keith is holding him close and cozy and this is _so gay_ , and he might have said that part aloud, but Keith only snorts and mumbles something he can’t hear and Lance doesn’t care, not at all, not one bit, that he just might be hugging Keith tighter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: THERE IS A BIT OF GORE IN THIS CHAPTER. I didn't expect it either :0 If you think you'll be triggered by it, please see the End Notes for spoilers and where to skip.
> 
> Enjoy!

After a couple more extraction cycles, the percentage of Galra quintessence in his system is down to twenty-four, and Lance is officially let out of the pod and allowed to return to his room. He does, for a little while, to sleep half a day away in a mattress for once, barely getting out a “I missed you, bed” before he’s fast asleep when his head hits the pillow.

Hunk comes by in the evening to remind him that he should eat something. Lance follows him to the kitchens, trudging, listless. Hunk figures he just slept too long — that, or not eating drained his energy. But even after Lance eats a little, there still seems to be a kind of fog around him. Like Lance is distant and small on the horizon and doesn’t come closer no matter how much Hunk attempts to call him.

“Feeling better?” Hunk asks after some time passes. Lance hasn’t wolfed his food down by any means, but he’s not just picking at it, either. He merely looks at it, like he doesn’t quite trust it but knows it’s the only thing available, the same way they all were towards Altean food when they first arrived.

Lance takes an extra beat to look up at Hunk. “Yeah,” he says with a sigh and a smile. “Much better.” He swirls the goo around in his bowl with his spoon. “Anything new from Shay?”

Hunk lights up and the anxiety that’s clouded him for the past hour washes away, just for a little while. “Shay and I are still texting. The messages don’t travel very fast, though. Takes forever to have a conversation, honestly, but it’s easy to get used to. Kind of like writing letters.”

Lance grins. “Space letters?”

“You can’t make everything astrological just by putting ‘space’ in front of it.”

“I can too, space friend.” He taps his spoon on the bottom of his bowl with a dull clink. “What’s been the latest space news?”

“Here, I’ll show you!”

Hunk pulls out the communicator that Coran helped him put together. It looks sort of like an Earth tablet, touchscreen and all. “So far it’s only got the texting feature,” Hunk rambles, pressing a few keys until a message board appears. “But Pidge said we can work with it more to make it do other stuff. I’m thinking maybe a camera, so we can take photos and make videos.”

“So…” Lance says slowly. “Sp—”

“ _Yes, Lance,_ ” Hunk says. “ _Space vines_.”

“A man after my own heart.”

“Anyway,” Hunk laughs and shows the screen to him. “Shay told me the Balmera is doing better than ever. They’re starting to rebuild from the damage the Galra left, and she says we can go back anytime if we need a new crystal. Business aside, though, I’ve been teaching Shay all about texting lingo. You know, LOL, GTFO, all those. I don’t think she quite gets them yet, though, look.” He grins. “I texted her LMAO and she wanted to know if humans have detachable butts—”

Lance bursts out laughing. “What did you tell her?“

“I told her yes, of course!”

Lance shakes with it, calming down. “What about emojis?”

“One step at a time,” Hunk says. “Though I taught her the basics. Smiley faces. She doesn’t understand winking ones, though. Apparently winking is some kind of Balmeran insult.”

“Oh,” Lance snorts, “oh shit.”

Hunk smiles, glancing at him for a moment. The Lance he knows is starting to come back, though it’s a slow process. He can at least get him to laugh. But when he begins to talk and Lance simply listens, Lance puts on a smile. Unfortunately for Lance, Hunk has known him for too long; he can tell when something’s off.

Hunk clears his throat, pausing to study him from across the table. “I’m… I’m glad you’re out, Lance.”

Lance’s expression fades ever so slightly. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

“Sleep well?“

A beat. “Yeah.”

Hunk searches his expression. What he doesn’t find is genuine — it’s worn like a mask, possibly for Hunk’s sake, possibly for his own. And he wishes Lance could just be honest about the whole thing, what he’s going through, how he’s feeling, but Hunk can’t bring himself to be so selfish as to demand that outright. Lance has to give it at his own pace.

Still, Hunk can’t deny that it bothers him.

“Are you… okay?” Hunk backtracks for a second. “Sorry, I mean. I know you’re _not_ okay, I just… I’m here for you, whatever you need, buddy.”

Lance flinches, then settles. He puts his spoon down and there’s a crease in his brow that he hasn’t been able to soften since he was released from the pod. Hunk wants nothing more than to smooth it out, but he knows getting rid of a small facial tick won’t fix things.

“It’s not your fault, Hunk,” he says after a moment’s pause. “There’s not much you can do. I don’t even think there’s anything _I_ can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to describe it.” Lance rubs at the back of his neck, where the entry points might still be sore, for all Hunk knows. “It’s almost like… I forgot what it’s like to be me. Does that make any sense?”

Hunk shrugs, sympathetic. “My guess is, when you haven’t been in total control of your own body, defining yourself is difficult.”

“Yeah, difficult,” Lance snorts.

Hunk can guess he’s struck a slight nerve, but Lance won’t blame him for that. He seems to know he hasn’t been open about everything he’s going through, and Hunk doesn’t want to play therapist. But he _does_ want to play friend — whatever kind of friend Lance needs.

“So you need to find yourself again,” Hunk repeats.

Lance swallows, throat bobbing. “How?” His voice drops lower. “How do I get that back, Hunk?”

“I don’t know if you can, dude. Just being honest,” Hunk says. “I mean, it’s not like we have footage of what you used to be like or anything.” Lance is quiet as he stares at the table, so Hunk continues. “But you’re still _you_ , Lance. Even if you’ve got some weird stuff in you. After we found out Keith was part alien, we all still saw Keith as Keith.”

“But Keith didn’t _change_ ,” Lance says, the divot deepening in his brow. “We just found out something new about him. But he didn’t change from one thing to another. I’m not _human_ anymore, Hunk. Hell, I’m not even alien. I don’t know what to call this, just… _monstrous._ ”

“You’re not.” Hunk frowns at him, and something in his tone seems to force Lance’s gaze up to his. “You’re _not._ I don’t care what the hell’s in your system. For all I care, they could’ve turned you into some kind of squid creature with twelve eyes and green spots and the occasional taste for Hawaiian flesh and I’d still love you because it’s _you_ , Lance.”

Somehow, that gets a tiny chuckle out of him. He leans back in his seat. “Thanks?”

“ _Absolutely_ , dude.”

Lance doesn’t say anything more. There’s a slight smile on his lips for a little while, but soon it fades. He’s thinking. Deep in concentration. Like he’s not in the room anymore but somewhere else, far off. Hunk wonders if he should ask the question that’s sitting on the tip of his tongue. But he decides it’s better to ask than to keep lying.

“Do you still hear the voices?” Lance’s head whips up, eyes wide, and Hunk shrinks back a bit. “Sorry. Keith told me you hear voices. Said I should probably know.”

“Fucking Keith,” Lance mutters. “Yeah. Yeah, I still hear them.”

“Right now?”

Lance nods.

“What kind of stuff do they say?”

Lance slowly shakes his head; he won’t make eye contact. “Hunk, I don’t think you want to know.”

“Tell me.”

“Hunk…”

“What are they saying right now?”

Lance’s eyes dart over the table. He fidgets, the spoon twisting around in his fingers.

Crap, Hunk knows he shouldn’t have pressed. Lance should tell him this kind of thing when he wants to, even if Lance is sometimes the kind of person who needs to be nudged in certain direction. The silence between them goes on for too long, and Hunk almost says, _nevermind_ , _I don’t actually want to know_ , when Lance coughs.

“They’re telling me that I’m weak,” he says. “For staying with you guys, for choosing others over myself. Trying to… infuse me with some kind of Galra mentality, I guess.”

“Lance, caring for others doesn’t make you weak.”

“Maybe I _do_ care too much, though,” Lance mutters.

“Not a chance,” Hunk says. “God, I wish those voices weren’t just voices or I’d beat them up for even _suggesting_ all that. Lance, you’re the most caring guy I know. You give the _most_ shits, and I honestly don’t know how the team would survive without you. Hell, we _haven’t_. Remember, Lance, those voices are lying.”

Lance shivers and sucks in a breath between his teeth.

“… Lance?”

Lance shuts his eyes and clenches his fists and goes quiet for a longer stretch of time. Hunk waits. If the voices are still going, if they’re constant… Lance is probably battling them right now. He can’t imagine what that’s like, let alone imagine what he can offer.

“What can I do?” he ventures, even though it’s possible Lance can’t hear him. Keith said the voices made him feel like he was drowning.

Maybe he needed to be pulled back up.

Lance opens his eyes, unseeing. Hunk hears a slight creak, but he can’t tell where it’s coming from. “Lance,” he tries, waving a hand in front of his face. “Lance, are you—”

The spoon in Lance’s hand snaps in half, startling Hunk. Lance blinks and drops it, two metal pieces falling loudly to the table, and an enormous breath pours out of him like he’s been holding it all this time.

“ _Lance_.”

“What?” he murmurs, dazed.

“It’s Hunk, buddy. Your name is Lance McClain.”

“I—” he starts, stops, breathes. He chances a look around the room. “Oh. Fuck, fuck,” he mutters, terror creeping into his face, “did I…?”

“You just spaced out for a few minutes,” Hunk says. “You didn’t do anything. You did break a spoon, though.”

Lance breathes quickly, shakily, until he finally begins to calm down when Hunk envelops Lance’s hands in his own. Lance’s fingers feel far too cold and they’re trembling, but with some work his skin gets warmer. Hunk can't tell him — how scared he was, how horrified that Lance would turn again, attack him, with no one else here to help him fend Lance off.

“You’re controlling it,” Hunk says instead, more guessing than stating, but maybe it will help. “You’re doing well. You can beat this.”

“But…” Lance turns his gaze up to him, hopeless. “If I have to spend all my energy battling this… this _thing_ … what’s left of me, after that?”

“We’ll figure it out. We can’t solve this overnight, but… we’ll figure it out.”

Hunk holds his hands and tells him this to reassure not only Lance but also himself, because Lance needs it and the team needs it, needs to remember that things will go back to normal, one day.

And even if they don’t, Hunk is determined to get them pretty fucking close.

 

~

 

Keith’s back is turned, and that’s when Lance strikes.

“Lance—” Keith starts, and Lance _clings_ to his name from Keith’s voice, desperate to hang onto it and let it pull him to the surface. But it doesn’t — only falls away, its connection snapped by the clash of their swords.

_no, please_

_not Keith too_

_Keith_

_Keith_

Each breath is punctuated by their swords coming together, _in, out, in, out,_ until Lance can’t focus anymore. Though his physical lungs don’t obey him as they should, he _feels_ the quickened pace of his breathing; it only emerges as the hungry pants of the thing controlling him, the growls that escape past his teeth, the words that bite, tear, mangle.

“You blue idiot,” Keith says, and his eyes are wide with a mixture of confusion and fear, towards _Lance,_ and that’s something he can’t bear. “What’s wrong with you?! This isn’t funny!”

_it’s not_

_everything’s wrong_

_this isn’t me_

_don’t think this is me_

_Keith_

Instead, his lips curl into a snarl as his mouth tells Keith how much he can’t _wait_ to kill him, and when the realization dawns in Keith’s gaze, Lance once more grasps for it like a lifeline. Because now Keith knows, and now Keith can fix all this. Even if Lance is suddenly faster, stronger, can feel all the raw power new in his bones, it’s _Keith_ who’s the master swordsman here.

“What have you done with Lance, where is he?”

_no_

_I’m here, it IS me_

_HELP ME_

If Keith believes that this is not Lance’s body, if he believes Lance is somewhere else, Keith won’t hesitate to cut him down. Keith will run Lance through until the blood spills from him, irreparable, and he’ll die, and Keith will live on with the knowledge that he killed his fellow paladin, and that _can’t_ happen, because Lance will fight back, Lance must survive, Lance is stronger, Lance is more powerful, Lance has the upper hand and Keith is the one now standing in his way of victory for the Galra Empire, and the Galra Empire always wins, and with Lance as their agent they will be unstoppable.

“I’m right here, Keith!” he yells.

_kill me_

Lance, once more, can’t shut his eyes as the rest plays out before him by his hands. And Keith looks _terrified_ , god, _fuck_ , and there’s nothing he can do. The water fills his lungs further and further until he feels that they’ll burst, but he yells and shouts regardless. His efforts are futile — it continues to use his body to fight Lance, use his voice to act like Lance and tell the others everything is fine, and he loves it,

_Allura_

_Keith, tell Allura_

_please_

_please_

He lunges in for Keith.

 

Lance comes to after who knows how long, curled up with his arms tight around his own knees as he gasps for air. His throat hurts. His head hurts. He presses his fists to his temples and shuts his eyes tight.

“What is this for, huh?” he mutters to himself, to the voices in his head. “Why give me back these memories? _Why?_ ”

_“To show you what you’re capable of.”_

_“Remember how powerful you were?”_

_“The fear you saw in his eyes. Don’t you hunger for it again?”_

Lance tries not to cry, because he _does_. He _does_ crave it, _loves_ seeing the ruthless Keith Kogane at his mercy, under his hands, scared of him, because it makes him feel powerful, like he can do anything. Like he can finally surpass Keith, his ultimate rival, like he’s always wanted.

_“See? This is what you dreamed of.”_

_“You can have your prize.”_

_“You have more strength than you think you do.”_

_“Use it.”_

“No,” he mutters, “no, no.”

Sure, he always wanted to come out on top, beat Keith at his own game, prove, _finally_ , that he was better than his original cargo pilot rank, better than never-good-enough.

But not like this.

Never like this.

_“You are weak, and you will lose.”_

The red bayard sword tears through the center of his back and emerges from his chest, the white of the blade joining the scarlet hilt with his own blood, and he coughs, hands shaking as they lower to the lacerated skin and flesh of his middle, and looks down despite himself to see his insides dark and bubbling and soaking his shirt. His sternum, his ribcage, his heart, his spine, all pierced through and decimated. He doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that Keith is there, slowly twisting the sword in his body.

_Did Keith always want this?_

_Is he happy? To have finally won?_

_Or is this the only option he had left?_

Lance lurches and tastes heavy, thick, disgusting iron in his mouth, pooling over his teeth and across his tongue until he has to spit the red out, and he watches the blade turn and turn, drilling a hole into his body with sickening squelches and crunches, and doesn’t realize the scream he hears is his own until he can’t breathe enough anymore to keep making it.

A sob wrenches out of his throat as he scrambles out of bed and hits the nearest wall, bracing himself against it. He’s going to die. Sweat lines his brow and the blood is warm on his skin but the rest of his body is cold, so cold, he’ll die like this by Keith’s will. He pats his front desperately with both hands before glancing down.

Nothing. His shirt is clean. His hands are spotless. There’s not a drop of blood anywhere, no hole in his chest, but somehow he still feels it, the phantom sensation of literal emptiness in his body.

His body itches with anxiety and staying here will do nothing for it. Even though his room is far more spacious than the pod, he senses the walls closing in around him, squeezing him tight until he can’t breathe again.

Lance throws on his jeans and his jacket and his shoes and heads out. No alarms sound when he leaves, but even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. He keeps walking, wherever the halls decide to take him, wherever his body wants to go. If it’s to the airlock, fine. If it’s out into space, fine. Maybe if he no longer depends on respiration he won’t have to try catching his breath anymore.

It’s a while of twists and turns, halls and corners and doors and more halls that he no longer keeps track of, before he reaches the hangar door and thinks, _ah._

Well, nowhere to go but up.

The rest seems like a blur because he’s done it so many times. Right now, it’s not so much of a thrill as it is a comfort, and the sensation only swells once he’s ejected in to the pilot’s chair of the Blue Lion. It purrs, and the sound curls around him, wrapping him up in a soft, delicate welcome.

The Blue Lion does not reject him. It does not regard him with fear, or unease, and it does not try to fix all the things in him that are now broken. It does not judge him, it does not hate him.Blue only _is_ , and right now, that’s what he needs.

So Lance sits in his chair and is, too, and instead of drowning, he feels like he’s flying.

The Blue Lion doesn’t leave its hangar, but all the same it takes Lance on a ride, freeing his mind from the extra noise. The cotton clogging his head falls away and he knows he could probably sleep, and he wouldn’t even dream. Simply drift off into nothing and let go. And when Lance is calmer than ever, hearing only himself in his own thoughts content and safe, Blue speaks to him.

“Lance? _Lance._ ”

“Blue? Holy shit, you can _talk—_ ”

“ _No_ , this is Allura,” she says, and her face comes up on the screen in front of him. “The system alerted me when you went through the hangar. Are you _in your lion?”_

“Uh…” Lance blinks. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Are you okay?” She frowns. “Were you sleepwalking? Are you not yourself?”

Lance breathes deep, feels the air in his lungs. Smiles, tired. “I think I’m more myself than I’ve been in a long time.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

The Blue Lion purrs in the way only he can hear, and he knows what to do. It’s fascinating, really, how a magical piece of machinery seems to comprehend him more than anything else, at least for he moment.

“I just kind of… wandered here. Blue wants me to go somewhere.” He nods to her. “And I want you all to come with me.”

“You want me to wake everyone up?” Allura asks, nearly incredulous.

“If you don’t, I’m going alone.”

“Lance, you’re not going _anywhere_ if—”

“Allura, _please_.” Lance leans closer to the screen. He needs this, he knows. After everything, he’s been lost, but finding his lion has returned to him a part of himself. “I know you don’t trust me, not all of you, not completely. That’s okay, I get it. But I know you trust Blue.”

She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Her hair is askew and riddled with cowlicks, she’s still wearing her bedclothes, and her eyes appear shadowed. “All right. All right. I’ll grab everyone. Where are we going?”

Lance can’t help but affectionately pat the dashboard as the lion purrs under his hand. The voices linger, but they’re quieted by every soft feline rumble that drives them away. “I don’t know,” he says, offering a shrug. “But Blue does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [SPOILERS FOR THIS CHAPTER]:
> 
> Lance hallucinates that Keith has stabbed and killed him.
> 
> To skip, stop reading at _"'You are weak, and you will lose.'"_  
>  Start reading again at "His body itches with anxiety and staying here will do nothing for it."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so sorry for leaving you hanging for 2 weeks!! Real Life™ happened — I went from being unemployed to suddenly working full-time between two jobs. I also dealt with some unfortunate writer's block, and that uphill battle has been difficult but steady. More about future updates in the end notes!
> 
> In the meantime, I can't thank you all enough for the kind comments that have still been rolling in. Honestly, those comments were some of the only thing kept me going whenever I was struggling to write. You're all too sweet and I don't deserve you ;u;
> 
> Thank you also to the artists who have bestowed highest honors of drawing things for this fic!! Please let me know if I've missed any--
> 
> Some [lovely creepy angst](http://theartarmature.tumblr.com/post/148117758721/) by theartarmature @ tumblr!  
> Some [gorgeous pseudo-Lancecest](https://twitter.com/looz_y/status/759744123641311232) by looz_y @ twitter!  
> Some [stunningly terrifying dark!Lance](https://twitter.com/Visorak/status/762624792251944960) by Visorak @ twitter!
> 
> Enjoy the new chapter!

It’s a tight fit, but soon the team gathers into the cockpit of the Blue Lion. Lance has kept his hands off the controls, waiting until everyone has found a space. Pidge steps in drowsily but their glare could cut daggers while Hunk, yawning, takes Lance’s left and hangs his arm over the top of the pilot’s chair. Shiro and Keith have managed to find themselves side by side one another. Lance doesn’t ask, but there’s a tension between them — where they’d normally have no problems talking to one another, they cast their glances aside.

“Are you sure about this, Lance?” Allura says. She comes up to his other side, and the hand she places on his shoulder is no small comfort.

“Positive,” he says. “Blue makes me feel better. Blue will know where to go.”

“All right…” she says, hesitant but willing to try. “Ready, everyone?”

“This ride won’t be a rollercoaster like last time, will it?”

Lance smiles at him. “Hunk, relax. And if you feel it coming up, don’t get it on me.”

“Great.”

After Coran confirms he’ll be fine on his own guarding the castle, they set off. Blue gallops out of the hangar and leaps up, off the planet, out of orbit, into deep dark space. The portal appears before them, slowly turning, drawing them in and Lance closes his eyes and lets Blue take over to feel the momentary weightlessness of their travel. Blue flies faster than he’d previously known possible, but in these seconds time seems to slow. Goosebumps prickle the surface of his skin and his soul seems to bathe in the vast of the universe. With the entire conceivable world at its clawtips, Blue could be taking them anywhere.

The lion rocks forward to a brief stop, out of the portal, and begins its descent as Lance opens his eyes again. A tick passes before he comes back to himself, brain somewhat rattled, though his friends are still around him and his mind is still, for now, his own. The planet below them swirls, familiar, and Lance has both a good and a bad feeling about this.

“Why did Blue take us here?” Pidge says.

Shiro shrugs. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Hunk swallows, because he already knows, and he has a feeling that Lance does, too. But they continue on, bursting through the planet’s atmosphere and skimming the surface of its ocean. Eventually Lance, hesitant, takes the controls so they can hide Blue within a wave-cut notch under a beachside cliff and put up its shields.

When they land and emerge from the lion onto the shore, Lance’s heart skips several beats. There’s no way to describe it — he feels everything and nothing all at once, like a pit has been carved out of his stomach and he has piles of stuff in his hands and he can’t manage the fullness or emptiness of either.

So he stands, shoes scuffing the dirt, and wonders why, out of everything, the familiar gravity of Earth feels so _right._

Allura finds herself deep in analytical discussion about the similarities between Earth and Arus with Shiro and Pidge, who tell her more about the complexities of Earth’s climate, such as the varying temperature difference between the air and the sea and the effect that the moon has on the ocean’s tide. Lance hardly hears their voices. All he does is gaze out over the gentle waves that glimmer, nearly blinding in the afternoon sun. Seagulls laugh overhead and the tide rushes in close with deafening noise, yet it rises gentle across the sand. The wise, ever-changing, _breathtaking_ power of water — it’s incredible how much Lance missed it. All of it is almost enough to wash out the voices in his head, but not quite.

_“Maybe you should just drown yourself.”_

He’s not sure who’s talking — him, or them.

The wind picks up, whipping his hair around his face, and the sand and salt sting his eyes and his skin like needles that welcome him home. Lance tears himself away from the ocean to the town nearby, though, to the line of houses and short buildings in the immediate distance, and even though he’s no longer in his lion, he hears Blue purr approvingly.

Without the rest of his team, he starts walking.

“Lance!”

“Hey, wait up!”

 _“Your home planet is pathetic. So poorly built, so primitive,”_ the voice says in the back of his mind, returning with a chill that makes Lance shiver. He pushes it down and keeps going. His feet carry him all on their own, recalling the road, weaving street after street as his body proceeds on autopilot. It’s different than the experience of being controlled by the voices, by the Druids and the Galra — it’s the sensation of unchanging origin, that no matter how often he leaves, he can return to find everything exactly as he left it.

He doesn’t notice until they’re farther into the commercial part of town that all of them are getting inquisitive stares. He wonders, suddenly, if their faces have all been broadcast on the news, if their sudden departure from Earth was recorded by the Garrison. If the government ever even exposed the fact that Shiro had returned to Earth, only to leave soon after. What do they all know?

_“What? You thought they cared?”_

_“This place is exactly as you left it because they all moved on.”_

_“They don’t know how quickly you could—”_

Lance shakes his head desperately. Maybe they’re staring for all those reasons. Or maybe they’re staring at Allura, who are not exactly inconspicuous; despite her humanoid appearance, her pointed Altean ears do her few favors.

“Lance,” Keith says, catching up to him and joining him at his side. “Where the _hell_ are you going?”

 _Home_ , he wants to say, but somehow the word sticks to his throat and lodges there like a rock. Home. What if home won’t feel the same anymore? What if they never missed him? And even if they did, what if they won’t want him back once they find out he’s been…

_Corrupted? Hacked?_

_“That’s right,”_ the voice says.

_“They won’t want you, once they know what you are.”_

_“What you’ve done.”_

_“What you could do,_

_to anyone,_

_to them.”_

“No,” Lance murmurs, slowing to a stop.

_“They’ll see you for the monster you are.”_

_“You have no home anymore.”_

_“Do you see it now? We_ are _your home.”_

They’ve reached the residential part of town where Lance shuts his eyes and gasps, standing in the middle of the quiet street, fists at his sides as he lets the voices have their turn. He’ll exhaust them, return as himself, keep going, overcome them. Except they’ve spent so much time under his skin that they know him far too well, poke and prod at just the right spots, slip into his very bones with ease and take the reins.

For a moment, just one moment, Lance feels a familiar yellow heat rise up into his eyes.

“ _Lance_.”

Lance jerks his head up. It’s not the voices, it’s _Keith_ , who is close to him and intense with concern as he pulls Lance’s fist open and guides slender fingers into his palm. Lance darts over Keith’s face. He’d never noticed the strange hint of stormy grey in his irises but he clings to it, letting it ground him.

“I-I’m okay,” he stammers.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Hunk’s hand clasps Lance’s shoulder. “Good,” he says, “because your house is just up there.”

At that, Lance absolutely _pales_ and all the intrusive thoughts flood back into his head. They don’t want him, they’ll hate him, what if they’re not even _there_ anymore? “No, nope,” Lance blabbers, half-laughing, “I want to go back. Back to the Lion with us, huh? Nevermind. Sorry guys, we were just taking a walk. This was stupid—”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Hunk says, locking Lance’s arm into his own and dragging him up the street. “Blue wants you to do this, or it never would’ve brought us here. You’re not going back there until you do it.”

Lance wails. “Keith, help me out!”

Keith shrugs. “I’m with Hunk on this one.”

After one block, Lance finally stops struggling against Hunk’s immovable grip. After two blocks, Pidge complains about the uphill climb and guilts Shiro into carrying them. After three blocks, Allura no longer comments on the odd construction of every house they pass.

When Hunk stops, they all know they’ve made it, but Lance spotted it from the corner — he’d know that house anywhere.

It’s a rare shingled house painted baby blue and fading slightly on the side that gets the most sun. Three stories high, it towers above the surrounding homes, and while the front lawn is fairly short, the backyard extends far. Lance can taste the _lechón asado_ on his tongue already, reminiscent of barbecue parties at long tables to fit the whole McClain-Guerrero clan and then some, the smoke that washed over his father’s slender frame and stuck to his beard well into the night after the party had long ended, the garlic in the _mojo_ wafting about for weeks. He practically feels the bruises on his knees and forearms from stumbling in the grass while he chased after his sister Daniela when he was younger, after his cousins when he was older.

He looks to the porch railing where he remembers a mark he’d once made when Dani knocked against him too hard and sent him hard against the wood, chipping his front tooth. But he sees that the rail has been sanded smooth and painted over, and something about that terrifies Lance for just a moment.

But then he sees Dani herself, working a broom against the porch, her back turned. Her hair hangs in a long curtain over part of her face, sweat gathering at the nape of her neck and curling the roots. Her shoulders are warm with sun and her nails are short as they grip the broom handle, guiding it across the floor and sending leaves and dirt and dust down the porch steps in soft clouds.

Dani turns, sees them, and looks them over. It’s possibly Allura who catches her attention first, then Shiro with Pidge draped over his back, then Keith, and then recognition flits across her face when she sees Hunk, and finally she’s down to Lance who’s still locked in Hunk’s grip, though even if Lance wants to move, he can’t find the strength in himself to do it.

Her eyes slowly grow wide, and then the broom clatters against the porch as she launches herself over the railing, and Lance hears her garbled disbelief, “Oh, _alabado”_ under her breath, and he briefly wonders if she’s going to punch him like she normally does in their way of a friendly greeting when he’s been gone for a long time. But she doesn’t, fuck, she’s _crying_ , and quickly Lance finds himself wrapped up in her arms, squeezing him fight.

Lance can’t ever remember seeing Dani in tears, not since the start of high school when she decided to be tough for the rest of her life, and his heart hurts. But when there’s this much tension, he can’t help himself, so he says, “Aw, man, you cry now? How long have I been gone?”

This time she _does_ punch him, jabbing her fist hard into his bicep, and it’s an ache he can’t believe he missed. Even so, she’s still staring at him, incredulous, like she expects him to disappear if she blinks. Her cheeks are shiny with tears as she wipes them dry with the back of her hand, stubborn as ever, but her voice wavers.

“They told us you were _dead_ , dumbass.”

“Oh,” Lance says.

That makes sense, now that he thinks about it. They did sort of _leave the Earth entirely_ , and it’s likely that, whether or not the Garrison covered up the whole _mechanical-lion-plus-stealing-Shiro_ thing, they would have reported all of them as missing, presumed dead.

For a moment, in the back of his mind, he thinks he should prefer it that way.

Suddenly the screams swarm in, high-pitched hollers from a handful of little and not-so-little cousins and neighborhood kids who all trip over each other to attack Lance’s waist and legs like they’re weighing him down to Earth so he can’t leave again. They all talk over each other in English and Spanish and he can’t understand a word any of them are saying, but he gives them hugs and big smiles and tells them he can’t believe how _big_ they’ve grown and then pawns them off to Hunk, who has always been a family favorite. Hunk gets a punch from Dani, too, only for her to jump into his arms because hey, he’d been presumed dead, too.

Dani still looks like she’s crying, but she insists on being introduced to Team Voltron regardless. Lance has a strange time explaining that Allura is kind of, sort of, possibly _an alien_ , that this is her first time on Earth at all. It’s almost mortifying when Lance teaches Allura the human custom of shaking hands, only for Dani to shake hers and blurt, _“Mierda,_ you’re _gorgeous!”_ and something of an Altean blush darkens Allura’s cheeks.

Lance gets comfortable, and with that he gets distracted. The Druid pull creeps in once more, claws digging at his scalp, the sensation of a hand grasping the back of his neck like it owns him. And it’s only when he notices it that he realizes, again, that he’s _dangerous_ , that Blue bringing him here was the _worst_ conceivable idea. To bring him to Earth, to his family, only for him to kill them all right when they’ve just had him back? The Galra _would_ do such a thing — to remind him of what’s most important to Lance, his family, his friends, bring together everyone in his life who ever meant something good to him and slaughter them all in one fell swoop. Destroy him completely and leave him the last one standing, until Lance has no choice but to submit himself because he has nothing left to anchor him.

And for a few minutes, amidst the screeches of little kids and Hunk’s abbreviated tales of their adventures and Dani’s excited questions about life in space, Lance can put the act on while he feels himself slipping even as he fights it tooth and nail to stay in control, even as he grins and hugs his younger cousin Yunior and prays he doesn’t start to squeeze too tight.

“ _¡Oye!_ What is going on out here?” A short, stocky woman with mahogany ringlets emerges suddenly from the front door, lips curled into a playful frown. She waves her arm like a shepherd ushering a flock of children into the backyard through the driveway gate.

The kids squeal and bound across the grass, but Yunior heads for her instead of the gate, tugging at the bulk of her apron. “Auntie, Auntie, it’s Uncle! Uncle’s home!”

“No more games, kiddo,” she chuckles, ruffling Yunior’s hair until he wriggles away into the house. “Dani, did you finish—”

She sees him, and Lance sees her, and everything stops. Lance’s smile fades quicker than a gunshot, one he feels in his own body, widening the hole in his stomach. Someone nudges him forward from behind, but he doesn’t know who.

_“She won’t love you.”_

_“She’ll know, soon enough, what a monster you are.”_

Lance opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He’s drowning, shackles tight around his ankles and wrists, keeping him rooted to the spot unable to move. The Galra, he knows, will take over his body again and make him deadly right in front of his family. They will take away what he loves most and use his own hands to do it. And they will start with his mother, a first victim to precede many more.

Lance only finds the strength to weakly hold up his hands, attempting to keep her away. “Mamá,” he says, soft. He hopes that she’ll understand. That she’ll head back inside and take Dani with her and lock the family away until Lance and the rest leave Earth. It would be for the best.

Instead, his mother doesn’t get the hint — her face contorts and she releases a pitiful, agonizing wail like he’s never heard from her. She’s rushing up to him and he can’t do anything to stop her because she pushes right past the hands he’s brought up in defense and cups his face in her palms. Lance doesn’t remember her being so small, but maybe his year away from home has somewhat aged her, burdened her, until she’s taken it upon herself to carry the weight of her grief.

She sobs her confusion loudly, trembling with it. Her watery, loving eyes take in every inch of his face, reading the new freckles, the old freckles, the decent cut Coran gave him when his hair was beginning to grow too long. He can hardly understand her — only gets the gist, that she believed him to be dead, that it’s been a year since he disappeared — but the lump in Lance’s throat makes him feel as though it will choke him.

Finally, she slows down and breathes with a small teary convulsion. Her fingers stroke his cheeks, and she stammers, wetly, “ _Mijo_ , is it really you?”

Lance doesn’t know.

It’s him, but it’s _not_. He’s not the same Lance who left Earth nearly a year ago, whose highest ambitions before Voltron had only been fighter class standing and the chance to prove himself. He’s not Lance at all, really, because his very DNA has been altered, his brain has been tampered with, his body has been used and used and used by something else.

But she looks so hurt and _hopeful_ in front of him, and her hands are so leathery and real on his face, and she may have more wrinkles than she did when he left but she’s just as beautiful as he remembers her with rosy apple cheeks and kind eyes.

So Lance nods and swallows down the lump in his throat with a smile, even though he’s not quite telling her the truth, and she cries as she yanks him down into a forceful embrace. The Galra voices aren’t whispering much to him now, he thinks — all he can sense are her strong arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, her garbled mumbles of grief and joy that make up her weeping. And despite the fact that he doesn’t feel okay at all, doesn’t feel like himself, it sort of feels _good_ to say that he does because it makes his mother happy, and maybe he could believe it, and it’s not long until he crumbles and clutches at her for stability like a weary soldier returning home to a mother who never got to say goodbye.

 

~

 

There was going to be a party anyway, but now what the party’s for has changed; what was once a simple summer get-together has turned into the celebration of Lance’s return. The barbecue is fired up and drinks are shared all around, beers and sodas and juices for the kids. It takes a while for Allura to find something that tastes good to her, as she’s wholly unaccustomed to Earth cuisine — let alone the strong Cuban spices — but she’s fascinated as Aunt Bev and Dani prepare paella in a three-foot pan on the grill, watching as they line the rim with black, briny muscles, and she finds something she likes eventually.

Hunk slides right on in, already so deeply entrenched in the McClain-Guerrero family that he could practically take on the surname for himself. They all welcome him with open arms and plates of flavors he’d so long been deprived of. Pidge, small and thus deemed in need of additional sustenance, is forced dish after dish until by the middle of the evening they’ve lapsed into a food coma, but they still manage to find room for Mrs. McClain’s beloved guava cake. Shiro, they find, is also popular with the kids. They’re especially fascinated by Shiro’s arm, especially when it glows, and though it’s still a touchy subject, he seems to do a good job of shoving his anxieties aside so the kids can have fun.

Lance feels like he’s on a rollercoaster — literally, as he’s passed between his family members for hugs and questions and persistent kisses — but emotionally, too, as he’s welcomed home with great enthusiasm and too many tears for his liking. Even his father, a gentle but somewhat stoically composed man, nearly breaks down when he sees Lance again for the first time.

Lance can admit to himself that it all makes him a bit uncomfortable, as happy as he is to be home. It’s what he’s been desperate for, for _months_ , and yet his homecoming is incredibly overwhelming because the McClain-Guerrero family is overwhelming by pure nature; yet it’s soured by the grave secret he carries within him.

A couple of hours in, Lance manages to slip away from the backyard party, which has seeped a little into the kitchen and laundry room. He sneaks upstairs for his old bedroom and wonders, suddenly, what they’ve done to it. Have they kept it the same? Have they finally caved and given it to Maria, who’s always wanted it now that she’s outgrown sharing a bunk with her little sister?

When he opens the door, he discovers that there’s no difference, as though he never left — save for one new addition.

“Oh.”

Keith jumps a little, startled as he turns to him. He stands at the corner of Lance’s bed, a half-empty bottle of apple juice in his hand. “Oh. Hey,” he says, coughing. “Sorry, I shouldn’t intrude.”

“No no, it’s fine.” Lance shrugs and closes the door behind him.

Keith nods, unscrewing and rescrewing the cap on the bottle with a little fidget. “But it’s your room.”

“How’d you know it’s my room?”

“You’ve got more than one ABBA poster and you have a framed picture of Dana Scully on your desk,” Keith deadpans. “Who else’s room would this be?”

“I take serious offense,” Lance says with a huff, “because all this time you never _once_ told me you’re a closet X-Files fan. How _dare_ you.”

Keith smirks. “I thought it was obvious.”

“I forgot you were into the whole conspiracy shit.” The realization then dawns on him. “Oh god, you’re the Mulder to my Scully. This is _not_ happening.”

“It’s not, Lance. Gillian Anderson is way hotter than you.”

“Well, that’s fair.”

It’s quiet for a little while as Lance takes a seat on the edge of his bed — even the bedsprings are familiar, bouncing with a slight squeak towards the headboard just like he remembers. Keith loiters, slowly pacing around his room like it’s a museum. Which makes sense, because it sort of feels like one, the way it’s been frozen in time.

“Why’d you come up here?” Lance asks.

Keith seems a little embarrassed. “Um… Your family is… a lot,” he says. “Sorry. You?”

“Same deal. Had to get away for a while, breathe a bit.”

Keith nods, but the expression on him, the tight-knit brows and the wide eyes, give him the look of someone facing a moral crisis. “I mean, I’m not used to it. No matter how much I ate, they kept giving me _more_. They’d ask me if I was still hungry and they wouldn’t _care_ if I said no.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lance says, “my Aunt Bev says you’re too skinny.”

Keith seems to fizzle out. “I’m not— not _that_ ski— Why does she even care?”

“That’s what family does.”

Keith appears not to understand just yet, maybe because he doesn’t see himself as family to Lance’s family when they’ve all just met, but Lance brushes it off. It seems sometimes that Keith comes from a different world — literally, in a way, with him being part alien and all. But they’ll work on it.

It’s not like they’re staying long, anyway.

“My parents wants us to at least spend the night here,” he says.

Keith blinks. “Can we do that? Will we all fit?”

“Allura talked to Coran, he worked it out. Anyway, Mom would haul everyone else out onto the floor and give us their beds, if necessary.”

“Would she really?”

“Nah, she’s all talk.” Lance snorts a chuckle into his drink cup and gets off his bed. “Hey, I’m gonna head back down. There’s still some cake left, you should come. It’s guava~”

“Maybe later.” Keith pauses, opens his mouth, hesitates. “Are you… feeling okay?”

Lance pauses in the doorway, hand resting on the frame. Even with his family around, the influence of the quintessence magic seems to linger in him still. It’s going to take more than a family reunion to fix him, he knows — not like he expected this to be solved all at once. It’s been the little things helping him come back to himself. Like he’s lost in the forest, following the trail of bread crumbs back to where he used to be: Home. Lance kisses his teeth and blinks at the floor. “I’m feeling a lot of things at once, I think,” he says slowly. “But… I guess ‘okay’ is one of them.”

Keith nods once and lets him go, and Lance feels a little awkward as he nods in return. For now, Lance returns to the party, diving back into the pool of embarrassing baby stories and horrible pictures of his younger self, big airplane ears and toothy grin and all, and he prays Keith won’t come down at all because shouldn’t have that much blackmail ammo on his hands.

Lance misses it — innocence. Doesn’t say anything about the fact that it hurts, knowing he’ll never have that again.

 

~

 

The McClain family doubles up in their rooms, leaving the guests a few solid beds and a couple air mattresses to divvy between them in the rooms on the first floor. Shiro is the first to pass out, followed by Pidge. Hunk stays up for a while longer, chatting with Lance and whispering too loudly until he, too, falls asleep. Dani, who’s about Allura’s size, lends her a pair of pajamas to sleep in, and they end up talking for another long while until Keith can eventually tune them out.

Keith stares at the ceiling for what feels like, and probably has been, an hour. So much has happened in less than a day — they’re on Earth, for fuck’s sake, _Earth_. Their home. His house is still out there in the desert. Even so, as much as he’s missed it for all these months, he has less of a desire to go back to it than he once did. He has more than one home now: home, in the desert, and home, in people — in his team, in the bonds they all share together.

But maybe it’s not that way for Lance.

Keith manages to fall asleep after a bit only to be awoken by the sound of a politely complaining floorboard. He peeks his eyes open, sleepy, wondering if it’s even worth it. If someone’s just getting water late at night in the kitchen. But what he finds, an image that wakes him up further, is Lance creeping around the other beds to get to the backdoor. He slips out quietly, avoiding every other floorboard creak with measured, memorized ease.

And after a moment of pondering as the door clicks shut, chewing on the inside of his cheek, twisting and fiddling with the old patchwork quilt Lance’s mother lent him, Keith hops out of bed, tugs his boots on, and follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I couldn't resist writing Lance's family,, Featuring Cuban Lance!!)
> 
> Because I'm now working, and because my schedule is never really "regular" (retail is an ass), I can't put out quick updates like I used to. I'll be writing what I can in my free time, but ultimately I don't want to make any promises I can't keep. I don't want to update this slowly in the future, but I also don't want to rush the writing process and give you shitty half-edited chapters. Just know that I have absolutely no plans to abandon this fic, so stay tuned for more!
> 
> If you have any questions, or if you want to see me complain about writing fic or about my life in general, check out my twitter [@queerschtein](https://twitter.com/queerschtein)! Feel free to tweet/DM me — I always love to chat!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience!! Your comments warm my cold angsty heart ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

Keith missed Earth nights. On Arus, nights were cold and still; it didn’t make him want to go out. On other planets they hopped, the atmosphere aways felt just a little too strange. But on Earth, especially in places like this, nights wash over warm and breezy, though the nearby ocean turns the air humid and salty as it brushes his skin the way it never did in the desert. Still, he can look up and see the moon, the very same moon anyone else would see, and the silky clouds that sluggishly meander past it.

Any other night, he’d take a while to enjoy it. Not now. Not when Lance is heading down the block on his own. Not aimless, not casual, no — with purpose.

He can’t see Lance’s face, but he _can_ see the slight beads of sweat gathering on the back of his neck just above the collar of his baseball tee, the clenching and unclenching of his fists at his sides, like he’s squeezing invisible stress balls but only succeeds at digging his nails against his palms. Keith hides a few times just in case, ducking behind fences and parked cars, until he gives up trying. Lance never looks over his shoulder, not even to either side, but only straight ahead as they walk past houses, through shop avenues with dark windows and empty streets, farther and farther until Keith is aware of the harsh briny smell hitting his senses and the grains and grit under his shoes.

He nearly trips over himself when Lance stops suddenly. Keith pauses, waiting, worry settling in his gut. Then Lance grips his elbow and rubs it, a nervous gesture.

“Did you follow me to see where I’d go?” he asks quietly.

Keith swallows and says nothing, but Lance laughs, bitter, under his breath.

“Did you not trust me?”

The breeze softly curls Lance’s hair, pushing it the wrong way. He turns his head just a little, just enough for Keith to see the tips of his lashes past the curve of his cheek. Keith can’t help but feel like he’s intruding on something intimate and not-for-him. Like Lance is here to open himself up where no one can see, break his own eggshells, let the yolk run and spill into the sand.

“No, I just…” Keith takes a breath, hyperaware of his own tongue in his mouth. “I just I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Lance’s head tilts up a bit, and then he’s turning around to look at Keith in a way that knocks some breath out of him. It’s a minute touch to a stoic face — something soft, vulnerable, liquid falling through the seams of his fingers faster than he can catch it — and Keith prays that Lance believes the truth of his words.

The wind slows between them. Lance closes his mouth, drops his gaze, and continues his walk. Keith suddenly remembers the day and a half they spent on Meriva, a planet composed of large and small islands all connected by a network of ferries and trains that skimmed the water, but what he recalls most clearly is the way Lance laughed as he ran onto the beach, waving the rest of them over, challenging Keith to a race he didn’t accept but watched anyway as Lance ran. That’s not what it’s like now. The curtain of nightfall and something else, something darker, has long since fallen. Still, more or less certain he has his friend’s unspoken permission, Keith steps in behind him.

The rest of the journey is just as quiet. They keep going and going, treading into the sand, Keith’s boots sinking a couple inches in with each step. When they reach the close shore, Lance bends down to sit and draws his knees in, shrinking. Keith sits next to him. A few minutes go by before Lance speaks.

“I used to come here a lot when I was little,” he says, a rough edge to his voice. “No reason, really, other than the ocean. Calmed me down when I couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep. It always… changes, you know? It’s never the same one instant to the next. Could never really figure out whether that was cool or terrifying.”

Keith doesn’t particularly like the ocean — at least, not as much as Lance does — but he keeps quiet. Lance crosses his arms over his knees and nestles his chin there, muted eyes scanning the far-off night horizon. They watch the water. The roll of the ocean’s surface, gentle, glittering, but tumultuous and dark underneath. The waves that kick up high, curve toward them, only to slow to a thin tide kissing the sand. The tiny wriggle pointing a V in the damp beachbed where a mole crab pushes up, then buries itself again to hide where it’s safe.

Lance sighs. “But I’m not the same person I was when I left.”

“None of us are,” Keith says.

“This is _different_ , Keith,” he retorts with a sliver of venom. “I’m something else entirely.”

“So am I.”

The venom in Lance’s brow slips a notch. He breathes out through his nose, wincing, so Keith keeps going, despite the fact that Lance isn’t looking at him.

“Take a lesson from the ocean if you’re going to come out here, Lance. You don’t have to be the same your whole life. You can keep changing. Hell, you went from being a cargo pilot, to being a fighter pilot, to being a paladin of a giant robot cat — did you plan all that out? No, you didn’t.”

“Keith, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Just listen to me for a second,” Keith says. “Okay? Think about this: even though the ocean keeps changing, it always stays in the same place. It changes, but it never leaves, and sure, some find it scary, but people still love it. And people still love you.”

“Do people love the ocean after it nearly kills them?”

Keith goes silent. Lance’s gaze bores into him, angry but also desperate, hopeless, pleading to be understood. Pleading for salvation, or possibly something more like absolution.

He takes a breath. “All right, so maybe it’s not the best metaphor, but you get my point. What I’m trying to say is, we trust you. We know you, and we love you. We see you fighting. We may not be getting a firsthand look inside your head, but we’re here for you.”

Perhaps to diffuse emotional tension, the way Lance seems to often do, he snorts a laugh. “This is rich, coming from the one who hasn’t trusted me since we left that Galra ship.”

“You _know_ I was only looking out for the rest of the team,” Keith says. He pushes his fingertips into the sand absently. “But I’ve done a lot of thinking. I know it took a while. I know I’ve been probably the last person out of all of us to come around, because trust isn’t something I give easily. But I’ve been going about it wrong. I don’t trust the voices in your head. I don’t trust the Galra, or their Druids, or any of this other _thing_ that has you all tangled up. But I trust _you_ , Lance. Always have. And I trust that you can fight them and win.”

Lance’s eyes are glinting in the moonlight, wide and unbearable. His voice wavers as he says, “But what if I can’t?”

Keith stares at him, stern, and tells him, “You can and you will. You’re strong.”

Lance lowers, and then somehow his head finds its way to Keith’s shoulder. He’s heavy as he sinks, but Keith doesn’t say anything. Only blinks a few times before he lets Lance settle there, bringing his hands up to hold him, to feel the slight tremor in his body.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “You can cry.”

“I don’t want to.”

“All right.”

They sit through another moment of stillness. It’s peaceful here, with the soft breeze and rolling waves, with the heat of Lance’s cheek seeping into the skin of Keith’s collarbone.

“I’m not crying,” Lance says.

Keith smiles and affectionately pats his back. “Okay, Lance.”

Lance wipes his face, takes a few deeper breaths — which aren’t all too solid — and pulls himself off Keith with a certain reluctance. The tip of his nose looks a little red, but it’s hard to see in the dim, though he wouldn’t tell anyone, anyway. Lance swallows, a motion that has his Adam’s apple bobbing harshly, and he fidgets his hands in his lap.

“How, um… How do you deal with it?” he says, soft, careful as he glances at Keith warily. “Being, uh. Part Galra.”

“Part enemy?” Lance opens his mouth; Keith holds up a hand. “Relax, I know what you meant. It’s okay.”

It’s not something he’s talked about at length, or even thought about himself. It’s something he has frankly wanted to avoid. He’s lived his whole life never having known this new information, so why should it influence what he does or what he thinks when nothing’s really changed? Still, he’s had occasional thoughts. Whether the Galra intend to use his lineage against him. Whether his existence compromises the mission, or Voltron itself. Whether Keith can be a competent asset to the team, even when his Galra genes may influence the way that he fights perhaps recklessly, careless in motivation.

“It’s a little hard to explain,” Keith says finally. He pushes a divot into the sand with his boot heels. “I don’t feel incredibly different after finding out. It’s sort of like… finding a new mole on me that I didn’t know I had. Except the mole’s kinda big. Maybe it’s a port wine stain. Maybe it’s cancerous. I don’t know anything, except that it’s there.”

“But you still have…”

“Slip-ups, yeah,” he says curtly. He looks at his hand, where he remembers each time the purple tint bled into his skin and the nail beds cracked to make room for his longer, sharper claws, where he remembers the pain of each transformation. “When the fangs come out, or when I feel the rage in my eyes, I can’t always manage it perfectly. I’m working on control, but maybe simply control’s not enough. Or maybe control’s not it at all.”

Lance sighs. “Keith, I was hoping this would help _me_.”

“It could,” Keith offers, shrugging. “I still slip up and go into Galra Mode — yes, Lance, your nickname stuck — but I do it less often now that I’ve changed tactics. Instead of fighting it, I sort of… work with it. Make it my own, and use it to my advantage.”

“Like all those times you got us into Galra facilities,” Lance says. “Or, hey, when you took out those guards because they thought they were fighting a human? That was kind of hilarious.”

“You almost sound proud of me, Lance.”

“Whatever.”

Lance jostles Keith’s shoulder, and Keith jostles him right back. He doesn’t have Lance all the way here, he knows — hell, maybe they never will, and maybe that’s okay — but glimpses of his original self are returning to the surface. But they only last a few more moments before they slip underneath again, sinking.

“I wish I could be that useful.”

Keith wants to _whine,_ because he almost had him there, but Lance is just returning to the same depressive state. Sometimes he wants to _annihilate_ the Galra for what they’ve done to Lance for this alone, not even counting the psychological and physical trauma. “Lance—”

“Keith, I was dead weight before this all started.” Lance curls in just a little tighter on himself. “Maybe that’s why they picked me. They saw a weakling they could use and manipulate and they took the opportunity.”

“ _Lance—_ ”

It’s his ragged breathing that makes Keith stop short.

“I can’t stand to know that they took advantage like that,” Lance mumbles, wet and fragile. “I can’t stand the fact that they’re _right_. Hell, Keith, I can’t stand that sometimes I kind of _liked_ it. Maybe they made me like it, maybe that’s just part of the limited-edition Galra corruption package, but it’s a feeling I can’t shake off.” Lance hugs himself as though he’s cold, but he can’t be in this weather. “I felt strong, like I’d never felt before. I didn’t feel like the old me, who’s always responsible for holding the team back, for getting us in deep shit, for being the one who always seems to fuck up and can’t ever actually _help_ —”

Keith grabs his shoulder, perhaps too forcefully, but at least it gets Lance to pause. “ _Lance_ ,” he says, “that’s not how we see you at all. We don’t think that way.”

“Really?” His face goes tight with anger that dredges up the worst kind of hurt, a hurt that’s been long-buried for more time than they’ve had dealing with Lance’s condition. “Because I can tell, you don’t have to say it. You’re thinking it, of the _burden_ I’ve created, and now, being a monster you have to tiptoe around like a bomb that might go off at any second! And all the time we’ve spent, we’re on fucking Earth for Christ’s sake…”

Keith shoves his shoulder now, turning it so Lance will actually face him. “Have you ever noticed you put words in my mouth?” he says. “First you had that thing about our supposed ‘rivalry’ when I hardly knew you. Then you think I hate you — I _don’t_ hate you, Lance. I’m irritated by you, and I’m annoyed at how much you can get under my skin like no one else really can, but I don’t hate you.”

Lance pauses. “You say it all the time.”

“Then I’ll stop if it bothers you that much, but I don’t mean it.” Keith sighs and combs his fingers through his hair, setting it right against the breeze. “Pidge says that kind of stuff sometimes, too. Do you think Pidge hates you?”

“Pretty sure Pidge kinda low-key hates everyone.”

Keith shrugs. “Pidge likes Shiro.”

“Everyone likes Shiro. I’d believe it if someone told me _Zarkon_ likes Shiro.”

They both laugh a little, and when a couple small tears roll down Lance’s cheeks, he wipes them away and Keith pretends he doesn’t notice.

“Look,” Keith says after a while. “Remember when you came up with a better plan to shut down the bay doors on Balmera? I would’ve rushed in and probably gotten myself killed _and_ hurt the planet if I hadn’t had you there to stop me.”

Lance snorts. “Well that’s nothing new. You do that all the time.”

Keith lets it slide. “And remember when you woke up from that coma to save me and Pidge and help us stop Sendak?”

Lance brightens immediately, eyes wider and glistening. “Oh my god,” he says, grinning despite himself. “You finally admit it.”

“I always did. You were just too busy denying our bonding moment to think about it.”

“I’m not admitting that one.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Nope! Never.”

Keith sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Bonding aside,” he says, “you’re a big asset to the team, Lance. With five of us, maybe it seems like one can shine more than others, and hell, someone like Shiro can make anyone feel inferior just by existing.”

“True,” he mutters.

“But we all have different strengths, Lance. Shiro might be the head of Voltron, but…” Keith gives him a tiny smile. “I’d say you’re the heart.”

Lance looks at him with wide eyes and in a way, for a moment, he doesn’t seem to be breathing. His brows lift up, and he looks almost… innocent. Keith doesn’t feel like he deserves that awed kind of stare, nor the slight rosy hue on Lance’s cheeks that might just be his imagination in the moonlight.

Then he smiles, big and wide with laughter so hard and hysterical that he can barely speak.

“That was – holy shit, Keith – the _sappiest_ – I’m gonna die, fuck – _Keith!”_

Keith pouts a little, because he’s just poured out some of his deepest feelings to _Lance_ of all people and of course Lance is laughing at him. But, he realizes, Lance isn’t really laughing _at_ him, just at himself, at the both of them, this situation, their being here, all of it. What they’ve become. Tears glint in the corners of his eyes and Keith is hit with the compulsion to wipe them away, but Lance does it all by himself before he can make himself move.

His laughter dies down. “Thanks, Keith. I don’t really know how much this helped.” Lance shrugs. “Maybe it didn’t. But… it’s nice to just talk. And it’s good to get that off my chest.”

Keith knows that this is hardly scratching the surface of all the shit he needs to unpack, but it’s a good start — that Lance can admit some of these things to someone who’s not himself, and maybe, hopefully, get a little reassurance that he’s still worth saving. He smiles a little wider, looking him over, and opens his mouth before snorting. “You may want to get something else off your chest.”

“Wh—” Lance sputters. “Keith, are you _flir—_ ”

“Crab.”

“What?”

Keith points. “Crab.”

When Lance finally sees the little red tuna crab clinging to the front of his shirt, he shrieks so suddenly that Keith bursts out laughing until his sides hurt. After a second of surprise, Lance seems to realize the crab isn’t actually so bad. He calls it a few cute pet names before grinning and throwing it at Keith. A horrible sound wrenches out of Keith’s throat and he scrambles to his feet, batting his arms and the hem of his shirt until it’s back in the sand, crawling off to live its life.

Keith goes to sit down again, grumbling, “You’re such an _asshole_ ,” and shoving his hand against Lance’s head — Lance, who is still laughing about it, mouth wide and eyes screwed shut as he collapses back into the sand and holds his stomach. And Keith snorts because hey, maybe he can forgive him if he gets this much out of it.

He hasn’t seen Lance laugh this much in far too long. It would be an understatement to say he’d missed it; Keith would put himself in comedic harm’s way another thousand times if he could keep Lance this happy, just for a few more seconds.

When Lance calms down, his cheeks are definitely flushed, and he rolls his head skyward, sand grains catching in his hair and sparkling like glitter.

“The universe looks so big from here,” Lance says.

He pats the ground next to him, and Keith concedes to lowering himself onto his back, lying at Lance’s side with inches between them. He brings his gaze up to the wide expanse of the sky with no obstructions blocking their view — only black, black space sprinkled with an incomprehensible amount of stars.

“Wow,” he breathes in agreement.

“And we’re the defenders of aaall of this,” Lance says. “And a million times more. A lot on our shoulders, huh? No pressure. No room for error.”

As Keith looks over at him, he notices a twitch in Lance’s brow, a wince in his eye. At first he almost wonders if Lance is falling asleep, but it’s something else. His chest stutters. His jaw goes tight. He swallows, thickly, and opens his mouth like he’s suddenly parched.

Keith doesn’t hesitate to grab Lance’s hand and lace their fingers together.

A few moments pass, Keith’s heartbeat nervously uneven in his chest, and then Lance finally, gradually, begins to settle down. He blinks slowly up at the sky, a shroud of exhaustion coming over him, but he’s okay.

They lie for what seems like hours, but it can’t have been more than a few minutes. Still, they seem long, stretched out as they lie together in the sand, hands still linked together with neither of them willing to let go, symbiotically anchoring one another in a brief pocket of time where everything is all right and Lance is still Lance and Keith wants to protect all of that, and more.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lance murmurs after a while.

“Yeah,” whispers Keith, who hasn’t given the stars another glance.

 

~

 

The next morning, the McClains whip up a big platter of eggs and a pitcher of orange juice, with a little leftover paella set aside for Allura, who doesn’t quite understand, anyway, the concept of breakfast as a separate entity from the other meals. Despite eating so much the day before, the team is ravenous, wolfing down plates and fighting over tortillas. Lance savors his last meal at home, imprinting the memory of flavors into his tongue, hoping he can recall them later when he eats food goo and pretends it’s the same thing.

Goodbyes are teary — Lance can’t imagine the pain his family’s experiencing, his family who’s just had him back only to give him up again. At least they don’t think he’s dead anymore, but now instead of moving on they have to fear for his life, which in a way he thinks is worse. Hunk and Pidge feel very differently; they both write letters to their families and give them to the McClains to deliver. There’s no time to visit, with Coran waiting for them to return, but this is the very least they can do. Lance, meanwhile, tries not to give his own family hope: no _I’ll be back before you know it_ or _See you in no time_. He’s courageous, or tries to act like it, and tells Dani they’re going to kick ass in space.

Dani gives him a fierce look and hugs him tight. “Just come back.”

Desperate to have as much time with her son as possible, Mrs. McClain accompanies all of them to the beach where they’ve hidden Blue. She doesn’t say a word the whole way, just studies his face, memorizing him, imprinting Lance into her mind for what might be the last time. Lance feels her stare on him and it makes him uncomfortable, knowing she has so much pride in him when she has no idea of the monster he’s been made into.

When they reach the shore, she pulls him down into a long hug that makes Lance’s heart nearly burst. She smells like tortillas and coffee and a little of the jojoba lotion she always uses on her hands, and Lance can’t help but tuck his nose into her neck as he squeezes her.

Her eyes are red when she breaks the embrace. “You’ll always be my baby boy, _mijo_.”

Lance shrinks with embarrassment. “Mamá…”

Her gaze hardens on him. “Just promise me one thing,” she says.

“Dani already gave me the whole talk. Come back in one piece, and all that.”

“No.”

Lance blinks at her. He knows the others are likely listening, even if they’re another several feet away, giving them space. But surprise hangs in the air.

“No?”

“The work you’re doing is important,” she says. “More important than me, or my feelings, or any of us, maybe even any of you. You call yourselves defenders of the universe, right? You think your job will end after just one adventure?” Then she smiles, wrinkles deep. “Of course I want you alive, and of course I want you to return home safely. But if you keep finding need out there, deep in the universe… Don’t ever come back.”

Lance’s throat tightens until he can hardly breathe. “Mamá…”

“And you listen,” she says, placing her hand on his chest, over his heart. “If you do one thing for me, one thing at all, never forget where you come from and who you are. Space is huge, I know it’s easy to get lost. But you are selfless and brave and you’ve never been anything else. So you remember what’s important, _mijo_. And when you remember it, protect it at all costs. Believe in people, _help_ people. Defend.”

Lance places his hand over hers, gripping it tight.

“You understand me?” she says.

He nods, head hanging. “Got it, Mom.”

As the Blue Lion leaps from Earth, Lance replays over and over his mother’s words of love before the voices in his head bury them forever.

 

~

 

“I was going to wait until we were back on the ship to kill all of you. But honestly, it’s been much more fun hunting you down one by one.”

_i can’t take this anymore_

But the magic in him still forces a smile to his lips, disgusting, curling, and it makes him feel like a helpless puppet pulled into various positions. He hates this. He hates all of it. But the power that surges through him, the energy and strength he feels when he buries his sword into Shiro’s arm — it’s breathtaking, satisfying. Who would dare cross him? Who can call him weak now? It serves them all right for constantly underestimating him. They deserve this.

_you’re wrong_

_they’re my friends, i love them_

_i’d do anything for them_

_anything, please_

“Let them go,” Keith says, showing off his own bayard. He’s ready to battle. Lance fights and claws for the surface, bangs on the door of his own mind, but it’s locked, won’t budge, and he sinks farther down, and feels himself submit.

“Don’t use that thing if you aren’t planning to kill me,” he hears himself say.

And it’s that, strangely, that grabs Lance, pulls him up just enough. Because the voice that speaks for him is right. And he clutches at that harder than anything as he realizes he can _work_ with the voice and get it to stop if he’s careful, if he follows the script.

_make me threaten my own life_

_they won’t expect that_

The entity in him pauses, thinking.

_threaten my life, and Keith will give up_

He tilts his head.

_and if that doesn’t work, killing me will devastate them_

“I can still threaten you with it,” Keith continues.

Lance can feel it considering his words, tries to withhold his own pleas for his body to listen. And finally, bringing the bayard up against his own body, it does.

“Your move.”

The relief Lance feels flooding into him drowns him more than anything.

 _Maybe they won’t miss me after all this,_ he thinks. _But at least they’ll be safe._

 

Lance wakes up quietly, far more subdued than he normally is after these nightmare visions. His lower back is throbbing and his head pounds, so he sits up and rests his temple on his knees.

Whenever he had nightmares, growing up, his mother would come into his room, no matter how tired she was, and sing him back to sleep. How did it go again? The lullaby, a soft one she sang in a slight accent back then — he grasps for the lyrics, the melody, anything, but they don’t come to him. So instead he reimagines his mother’s voice, telling him how much she loved him back on the beach at home, reminding him of what’s important.

But before he can stop it, a memory pushes into his head until it plays out right before his eyes.

 

 _He struggles and three soldiers have to hold him down, but it doesn’t matter once the robed figure stands before him, mask tilting to the side curiously. Lance shivers, because it’s_ creepy _, like something out of a horrid nightmare. A Druid, he somehow already knows._

 _One of the soldiers punches him in the jaw and boxes his ears, giving them enough time while he regains his strength to — no,_ no, _what are they doing? Sharp agony pierces the back of his neck, and he grits his teeth even though he knows he can’t fight it._

_“It’s experimental,” he hears someone say. “But it’ll do the job. In any case, he’ll serve as a good test subject.”_

_“For what?” he yells, still twisting and turning his body against their grip. He’s determined not to go down without a fight, but if anything he’d just be happy making their jobs that much harder. The soldiers carry him, and he can’t see where he’s going until they reach it, and he turns his head to look down._

_A pool? No, that’s not water._

_“Let go of me!” he yells, wrestling his leg from one of the Galra soldiers and kicking them in the face. They stumble back, and he struggles against the others, clipping one hard enough to knock their helmet off. But it’s not enough — they grab him again, stronger this time._

_“Just do it, now,” the Druid says, voice deep and sinuous, like it’s boring into Lance’s soul, like he’s hearing it in his head._

_The soldiers then submerge him in something excruciating that makes him feel like he’s drowning in cold fire. But just before he goes under, just before he screws his eyes shut and takes a breath for air, he glances to the far wall where he glimpses rows and rows of barred-off prisoners waiting their turn._

 

Lance has already woken the crew once before, so this time he waits until morning, seats himself in the lounge on one of the couches, unable to return to sleep. He bounces his leg and grinds his teeth and wrings his hands together to keep himself up. Hours pass before Shiro trudges in, rubbing his cybernetic wrist. He looks like he’s just finished his early workout routine on the training deck. Shiro stops short, seeing him there.

“Lance?”

“I need to talk to everyone,” Lance says.

When the crew is all up and functioning, they gather in the control room. Lance plays the memory in his head again and again, as painful as it is — at least it keeps the voices somewhat at bay, though they still filter in through any gaps, whispering, happy.

“Sorry for doing this again,” he starts off. He paces part of the room, massaging the back of his neck, still feeling so prominently the pain of the needle they’d shoved into him. “But it’s really important, and I can’t do it alone. I need your help.”

“Anything,” Hunk says.

Pidge isn’t so ready to jump the gun. “With what, Lance?”

Keith is eyeing him carefully, though there’s something less fiery and more forgiving in his eyes. Lance knows he’s seeing him truthfully, exactly for what he is, and he’s grateful — because it means Keith will likely, out of anyone, be the most on-board.

“The Galra prisoner ship,” Lance says. “The one where they grabbed me, infected me, the one where all of this started.”

He looks up at all of them, scanning their faces, and takes a breath.

“I want to go back.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been so excited to get this chapter out! Thank you all for your patience~
> 
> Special shout-out to @annoyedraccoon on twitter for blessing me with some [wicked fanart](https://twitter.com/annoyedraccoon/status/775208045185994753)!! You're all too good to me, I swear,,
> 
> Enjoy~!

“You want to do _what_?”

It’s Coran who blurts it, first to break the silence.

Hunk’s eyes grow wide. “Okay, when I said anything, you know, I didn’t _really_ mean anything.”

“Everyone,” Allura says. “Let Lance speak. We should know why before we judge his plans.”

All eyes and ears turn to Lance expecting an explanation. And Lance realizes he sort of doesn’t have one, but it’s the best way he’s been able to rationalize it to himself while he’s been plagued by a handful of hours of insomnia. So he talks and hopes he sounds semi-coherent.

“My memories have been coming back slowly,” he says, hands gesturing to keep himself focused. “Usually in nightmares. They filter in bit by bit, sometimes full scenes, sometimes just images or sounds or feelings. It’s like getting a bunch of puzzle pieces with no picture to go from, so I’ve just been putting together what I can.”

“Did you remember something new?” Shiro asks him. Arms folded, brow set in a firm bridge, he’s the paragon of attentive sobriety. It’s grounding, at least.

Lance nods. “Yeah, I, um…” It’s difficult to admit. “I remember now, when they did this to me. How they did it, even, I can sort of figure out. But I also saw others. More prisoners, more… subjects.”

He doesn’t have to look up at Pidge to see them stiffening up.

“Subjects?” they say. “Like, test subjects?”

“That’s my best guess,” Lance says, head lowered. “From what the Galra were saying, it seems like I was one of the first for this experiment. Who knows how many more… I have to help them get out.”

Pidge nods. “Then we should go.”

“Hold on a minute,” Hunk jumps in. “I hate to be the voice of reason here, _again_ , but we’ve got to think about this first. We got away from the Galra, you’ve been getting better, and now you want to go _back_? If they capture you again, who knows what they’ll do to you? If we fail, and if they know their test was successful, what’ll stop the Galra from experimenting on more subjects full-force?”

“They already know it was at least somewhat successful,” Keith points out.

Allura clears her throat. “I hate to say it, but I must prioritize our position as defenders of the universe. If there really are prisoners there undergoing horrible experimentation, and if Lance can guide us through with his memories, we have a duty to protect anyone in danger. Even if, _especially_ if, it means putting our own lives at risk.”

“We didn’t exactly sign up for all this with that in mind, Princess,” Keith says.

Keith doesn’t seem to have a particular side, which Lance finds troubling. Keith has blown up at others for taking big risks, endangering their own well-being, despite the fact that he does not shun his own instinctual recklessness. Does he agree with Lance? Disagree? What does he want? But then he finds Keith’s gaze on him, thoughtful but stubborn, and maybe it’s a comfort to see Keith has no real idea of what to do, either.

Perhaps they both remember Mrs. McClain’s words with some unease.

_If you keep finding need out there, deep in the universe… Don’t ever come back._

“I’m in the same boat with Keith on that one,” Hunk says. “I know we took up this mantle as defenders of the universe and all that, and I’m ready to do what it takes, but if we’re talking about running _headfirst_ into danger, right back into the place where Lance had all this happen to him, if we’re talking about maybe _losing_ him again…”

Hunk trails off. His voice had gone shaky before but now he’s crying. Lance can’t bear to look, so he turns to Shiro instead, chest heavy with an unspeakable weight that he tries to swallow down.

“Shiro, you’re our leader. You were under the Galra far longer than I was. What do you think?”

Shiro mulls it over for a moment. He takes a few deep breaths, and under his rougher, hardened exterior, Lance sees the hint of vulnerability he’s only seen a few other times — a breakable look that comes over him whenever he painfully relives his days of captivity. His eyes dart as though he’s seeing something no one else can.

“The Galra are merciless in experimentation,” he says. “They don’t hold back, and they have little regard for their subjects except those that are successful, and those they can use.” His hand subconsciously falls to his cybernetic arm, rubbing it uncomfortably. “I can’t bear the thought of more people enduring what Lance and I have both experienced. Especially if Pidge’s father and brother are among them. With that in mind, we should try to save everyone we can.”

Hunk mutters something under his breath, unintelligible. The tension is like a vice on Lance’s throat, leaving him unable to speak because he hates to hurt Hunk again, but for the sake of others, and a little for himself, he has to.

“If I were still on that ship,” Lance says, “you’d come back for me. I wouldn’t want you to, but you would.” He wants to believe that at least a little bit, anyway. “So I know this is a difficult decision. But I think it’s the only one. If we can rescue even a dozen of those prisoners, that’s a few more we’ve taken out of Zarkon’s hands. And if they know something, anything, it might be something that can fix me.”

He takes a few steps to Hunk. His hands in front of him, long fingers fiddling nervously with each other. This has to work. It will work. And they’ll all be better for it. Hunk still isn’t saying anything, but Lance sees how bitter he is with the way his mouth wobbles uncomfortably.

“I want the vote to be unanimous,” Lance continues. “All of us need to be in on it.”

Hunk brutally wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand, fists balled tight. Lance knows everyone else is watching them, waiting, their votes already cast.

He finally takes a deep breath. “We take every precaution,” he answers. “Every failsafe. We’re not leaving that ship without you, _alive_.”

Lance nods and gives him a tiny smile. “Glad to have you on board.”

The room still feels heavy — shifting feet, wandering glances, wringing hands — but they have to keep going. Lance turns to the main control panel and addresses the princess. “Allura. You still have a rough layout of that ship, right?”

Allura coughs once, pushing down whatever’s blocking her throat, and sets her expression purposefully before joining him. “I have it. Are you sure you know what we’re getting into?”

Lance musters a crooked smile. “We never do. But since when has that stopped us?”

 

~

 

They hash out a plan over a breakfast that no one really feels like eating. Pidge will be in charge of hacking the Galra ship to let them inside with a couple of pods for prisoners they find. The same trick won’t work twice, Pidge says, and last time the Galra seemed to know they were there, so they’ve got to use new avenues to get past their systems now. Allura and Coran will stay to hold open the portal and manage the mission from a distance, with Allura once again ready to disembark in the event that anything goes wrong. Hunk will have roundup duty while the Druids and Galra sentries are distracted.

“Which leaves us with the distraction,” Allura affirms. “Any ideas?”

“I have one,” Lance says quietly.

Lance hasn’t spoken for most of the meeting. He’s let the others figure out the initial steps, taking all precautions they feel are necessary, giving his input only in regards to the ship’s layout and what he’s seen firsthand. But this is the part of the mission he needs to have a hand in. When they turn to him, silent as to let him speak, he does.

“I can convince them that I’m still under their control. Flash my eyes a bit, talk the way they talk. Tell them I’m coming back to them. Maybe I can even pretend I’ve brought them the Blue Lion.”

Allura shakes her head. “We can’t risk the Blue Lion falling into their hands. Absolutely not.”

“And you are _not_ going in alone,” Hunk says quickly.

Lance sighs, exasperated. “Then what am I supposed to do? Use the buddy system? Take someone with me?”

“That might actually work.”

The team’s attention falls on Keith, sitting next to Lance, who leans forward to plant his elbows on the table.

Hunk blinks. “Come again?”

“Convince them you’re one of them,” Keith says to Lance, “but take someone as your prisoner, instead of the Blue Lion. Make as if you’re bringing them a paladin. That way, you’ve got someone with you, just in case.”

“I don’t know if I like it,” Coran says. “How will we even know that Lance is in his right mind the whole time?”

“ _Coran_.”

“He’s right,” Lance shrugs. “Coran, I don’t blame you. I’m just asking that you all trust me, but I know that’s not easy after everything I’ve done.”

“We’ll give your fake prisoner a panic button,” Pidge says, the epiphany striking. “See that Lance is going under again? Hit the panic button and we abort the mission and get out.”

“Yeah,” Hunk quips, “I like that a little better.”

“Okay. So?” Lance says, nervous as he leans back in his chair. “Who wants to be my fake prisoner?”

The room goes silent for a little too long.

Lance knows he’s asking for a lot. He can’t ask for too much more, but if they’re going to pull this off right, it all has to go according to plan, and they all have to do their part. He loves them all, and he wouldn’t risk any of their lives if wasn’t one hundred percent certain that this could work and do a lot of good for them in turn.

“Shiro?” he offers, hesitant. “To give them the Black Paladin—”

“I—” Shiro inhales sharply. “I can’t. I was already their prisoner once before, if there was even a chance of that happening again…”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” The return of the Galra’s hailed Champion would have been a solid bargaining chip, and the Galra would enjoy stealing the leading pilot of Voltron. But… “It’s too dangerous.”

Keith folds his arms, takes a deep breath, and says, “I’ll do it.”

Lance snorts a small laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” He gives Lance a solid glare from his side. “They know I’m half-Galra. They might believe I’m more susceptible to Druid magic. You can bring me to them as another test subject, I’d be valuable to them.”

Lance blinks at him. He hadn’t expected Keith to throw himself directly into the line of fire, much less be willing to trust Lance with his life, in a way. And sure, on missions they work well together, but he hadn’t thought of himself as meaning so much to Keith. Maybe he was wrong about him.

Or maybe Keith believes he can handle Lance if he slips into an episode.

“Man,” he mutters. “You’re full of surprises, huh, Keith?”

Either way, Lance thinks, he has what he needs.

 

~

 

They’re leaving to go their separate ways for the day — Lance to his room, Hunk to the training deck, Pidge to the lab — when Shiro stops Keith with a gentle hand on his arm in the corridor. Keith looks up at him, somewhat stricken, but he immediately shrinks on the defensive. Shiro doesn’t like the way his brows tighten, but there’s something more to his expression. A reservation that’s rare on Keith.

“Can we talk?” Shiro offers.

“Sure.”

They wait for the others to clear out. Keith’s arms, folded tight to his chest, begin to loosen as the minute goes by.

Shiro feels himself smile, just a little, because he sometimes forgets that while Keith is a young adult, he’s still kind of a teenager, and it’s normal for him to lash out. Shiro remembers being his age — following rules and maintaining order for what was expected of him but still somewhat excitable and a touch rebellious. It’s hard not to be in the Garrison where the fascination of space exploration is at stake but where being a pilot also comes with the responsibility for others on one’s shoulders.

Keith may have matured into a little more seriousness since Shiro left Earth, but he’s still the same Keith he knew back then.

“We haven’t really talked since that fight we had,” Shiro says finally. “I know it was a while ago, but I can tell you haven’t forgotten it.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not, don’t be stubborn.”

Keith sighs deeply. “All right. Maybe. I was just hoping you’d forget about it, honestly.”

Shiro laughs. “That’s just like you.”

“No! I—” Keith frowns. “It’s, you know… You were right, okay? About everything, all of it. We shouldn’t have kept Lance locked up for so long, shouldn’t have even _thought_ about keeping him contained for an extended time. It was stupid of me, and selfish, I just—”

“Keith, slow down.” Shiro puts his hands on Keith’s shoulders. “I understand where you were coming from. You were just trying to look out for the rest of us. I know all of this has been terrifying.” He chuckles under his breath. “Actually, I stopped you here to tell you that _you_ were right.”

“Huh?” Keith blurts. “What the hell?”

“You _were_ , Keith. You were right to protect the team. You were right to think about our safety, we had to consider that. I was just… somewhat blinded by what I’ve experienced.” He swallows. “I still am, and I realized that in our meeting just now, too. I’ve been letting my personal worries get in the way of how we handle these situations.”

“You have a right to,” Keith says.

“But as the leader of Voltron, I need to keep a level head. I’ve just feared… I mean, seeing Lance locked up in there, not knowing when we’d let him out…” It’s suddenly difficult for Shiro to articulate himself, and a pit settles in his stomach. “I saw myself there in Lance’s pod. And I’m afraid I’ll one day end up in the same circumstance. If this hand takes over, if the Galra pull me in again. I’ve felt it before, they could do it again. And I’ve accepted what you’ll have to do if that happens to me. You should be prepared to do the same we did for Lance, maybe on an even grander scale. If I turn on you… remember to protect the team.”

“No, stop that,” Keith snarls. “Don’t even _think_ like that, Shiro.”

“I _have_ to.”

Keith’s face falls. Shiro is telling the truth — it’s something Keith, at the very least, should know.

“Okay,” Keith says finally. “Think about it, then. But keep it at that, don’t _act_ on it. I’m tired of this ship carrying at least _one_ person who’s planning on doing something stupid.”

“Half the time that person is you.”

“Shut up,” Keith retorts, hitting him gently.

Shiro laughs, but he feels better having discussed this. Having put this weight off his shoulders and given just a little bit to Keith, even if it’s hard.

“Look,” Keith continues. “I don’t want you to think so negatively. And I don’t want you to think we’d _ever_ abandon you, Shiro. You’re too important to us, so… if something _does_ happen, we’re going to do everything we can. We’re doing it for Lance, and we’d do it for you.” He shrugs. “Finally got you back after your year-long stint in a Galra prison. I’m not going to let you go again so easily.”

Shiro chuckles to himself. “Thanks, Keith. I think.”

Keith nods like he’s glad they’ve talked, but like he doesn’t entirely believe his laugh, his words. Still, it’s something, because Keith cares. Keith has always cared, even when it seems like he picks favorites or appears standoffish. When he gives for someone, he gives his all, and he finds home in those closest to him because he’s never known a home that doesn’t move.

And as Shiro thinks about it, he sees Keith caring, more and more, for someone whose name he’d once forgotten entirely.

 

~

 

“Whenever you’re ready, paladins.”

They’ve all gathered in the hangar, preparing to set off in their individual pods. Lance and Keith’s will intrude normally while the others will slip in, hopefully thanks to Pidge’s programming, undetected. Pidge stands at the screen now, fingers flying over the keys as they code each of the pods for departure. As the Castle nears the Galra ship, Keith, outfitted like Lance in paladin uniform, approaches Pidge.

“You have it for me?”

“Yes, give me your hands,” Pidge says distractedly, pressing a few more buttons before scrambling to grab a device off the desk. Keith holds out his hands and Pidge places a pair of glowing handcuffs on his wrists. “Lance will take you inside with these on. They’ll also act as your panic button. It won’t take much for you to break out of them, but if you do, that’s our signal to abort.”

Keith nods. He flexes his hands, the energy humming between them when he gently pulls them farther apart like stubborn but willing magnets. Should be easy.

“And your uniform,” Pidge continues, tapping the shoulder of it. “I’ve done some temporary modifications. The suit will appear to be off, but you’ll still be able to use it if necessary. The comms in the helmet will stay on so we can contact you.”

“Got it,” Keith says. “Thank you, Pidge.”

“I’m just doing what I have to.”

Keith studies the green paladin. Faithful and reliable but also powerful and sharp, Pidge has served as a central cog within their machine time and time again. They pull through without question not because they can but because they must, and it’s an honorable trait for someone who has already lost so much and could easily fall back on pain. But it’s a trait that comes with an innate determination to solve anything without an answer and fix whatever’s not working. Even if that something is either incomprehensible or irreparable.

Or both.

“I know,” Keith says. “But we couldn’t do this without you. You’re the backbone of this mission. You’re the one we get to thank when this all goes well. Lance is going to be the one doing _you_ favors when we’re out of this mess.”

Instead of snorting a laugh the way Keith expects, Pidge steels up with something far too solid, too grim for their age.

“I can’t fail.”

Keith gives them a tiny smile and says, “You won’t fail.”

When the pods are ready, the room once more grows tense. Lance and Keith pile into their pod while Hunk steps into his own, accompanied by Shiro in another who has insisted on aiding the rescue effort. Keith takes a deep breath, fidgets the cuffs on his wrists, feels the helmet on his head growing just a little too tight. He knows they can do this, that they’ll succeed. Even still, he’s getting a minuscule sensation, hairs standing up on the nape of his neck, that’s telling him something’s still not quite right.

He shakes it out of his mind and chances a look at Lance.

Lance sits at the pod’s controls, back curved forward. He’s discarded his helmet for now — instead it looks somewhat empty on the dashboard next to both of their bayards — and he’s got two fingers on his temple, rubbing circles. Keith knows the voices give him headaches, or rather that he induces his own headaches to get them to stop, but he imagines they’re likely urging at Lance with harsher intensity now that the team’s got a plan to get rid of them once and for all.

“Lance? Are you all right?”

Lance starts, glancing up at him like he’s been woken up from sleep. “Yeah. Fine.” He smirks and props his chin up in his hand. “You trust me, Keith?”

“About as far as I can throw you,” Keith sighs.

Lance shrugs. “You’re pretty strong and I’m not that heavy.”

“I know.”

He feels Lance’s eyes on him as he crosses the floor to take a seat, but he focuses on the panic-button-cuffs on his wrists and the slide of the door shutting them in while the pod hums to life.

When they’re successfully aboard the ship, they wait for Pidge’s confirmation that Hunk and Shiro have safely docked without issue. Lance goes out first, giving a glance around to see that no one’s yet come to intercept them. But because they haven’t cared to hide themselves, it’s only a matter of time.

Lance takes both of their bayards but leaves his helmet, then tugs Keith out to follow. Keith stumbles, not yet having expected the harsh treatment. But Lance has a part to play now — warden for an unlucky prisoner.

“Where do we go?” Keith whispers into his own helmet.

“To your left, then go all the way down the end of the hall,” Pidge says.

Lance only nods as he follows the directions with Keith as a conduit.

As they walk the corridors, Keith once more tests the handcuffs. Carefully, so as not to set off the panic button too early, but enough that he can tell he’d be able to break free if he wanted to. That’s a relief, even if he doesn’t expect he’ll need to use it.

He trusts Lance. Knows he’s been fighting this. Knows he’s overcoming, slowly but surely, the mental binds that could have done him in for good.

“Come on,” Lance says, jerking him forward. He’s trying to lower his voice and make it sound authoritative, but it doesn’t really work. In any other situation, Keith would laugh, but suddenly he’s anxious.

“Might want to work on your acting,” Keith mutters when he gets close enough.

“I didn’t exactly rehearse,” Lance whispers.

Keith tries to keep his groaning to a minimum. “Great. Improv. We’re all going to die.”

Sounds come from somewhere down the hall — footsteps, the clacking of metal against metal, thick graveled voices — and an eerie tinny noise that scrapes, hollow, like nails on a chalkboard in the distance. Lance pauses and lets out something of a drawn whimper, and his grip tightens on Keith’s arm.

“Lance,” Keith whispers. Can’t have him bowing out now. “You can do this. I believe in you. I trust you.”

Lance whimpers again.

And again.

And again.

Louder, harsher, until Keith recognizes the sound not as a whine but a laugh seeping out of him in broken hysterics until Lance is shaking and cackling, and finally he turns to Keith whose heart and lungs have plummeted straight into his stomach. Lance smirks under a yellow gaze.

“Aww,” he croons, “you shouldn’t have.”

Keith is caught off guard by the way Lance sounds as though two people are speaking at once; and before he knows it he’s on the ground, helmet cushioning his fall enough to keep him awake albeit swimming dizzy, chest pinned under Lance’s heel.

“Keith?” he hears distantly — Pidge. “Keith, is something wrong?”

“Told you I’d have the last laugh,” Lance purrs with double-voice. “Well, party’s over. For you, anyway, it’s just getting _started_ for me and I don’t think I can wait any longer.” His smile grows wider, splitting his lips over teeth that have somehow grown sharp, and barks a laugh. “You should see the look on your face! You _actually_ thought you’d cured me? Thought you could fix this all up with science and, what, _friendship? Love?_ Your human is showing, soldier — guess a few tears and a hug was really all it took to get you to believe me.”

Pidge is still in Keith’s ear demanding answers, but Keith can’t figure out how to form words. His instincts are screaming at him to tear his wrists apart and activate the panic button, get the rest of them out while he still can, but he’s frozen under the way Lance is looking at him like he’s prey, head cocked as he casually peers over him and kneels down closer. His knee digs in, pressing the chest plate hard enough to let Keith feel even more harshly the hammering of his own heart against his ribcage. The chorus of soldiered footsteps grows closer — they’ve been caught.

Lance’s hands slip under Keith’s helmet to cup his cheeks with eerie intimacy and he presses his forehead to the visor like he’s basking in victory. “I have to give you all credit. You _really_ never give up. Not even Lance, no, he was a hard one to crack. But they all do, sooner or later.”

He smiles, fond of the fear in Keith’s eyes.

“They all do. Even you.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely feedback! I can't express my gratitude enough ;u;
> 
> ( **Also, slightly random note** : I realized I have a reference for the voices in Lance's head! If you want to hear what he's been feeling throughout this fic, listen to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9H41sI96hU) at a good volume and imagine it's a bit harsher and in English. Kind of unsettling, so be warned?)
> 
> Enjoy!

“Keith, do you copy?”

Keith swallows, throat bobbing. He searches Lance’s expression for a sign of loyalty, companionship — even a simple wink or a softness in his smile would do. But Keith finds nothing but a discordant chill in the warm color of Lance’s eyes, and he’s tempted to set off the panic button despite how early in the mission it would be.

Except Keith has a gut feeling that something’s off. A hunch, a sliver of intuition, a connection. _Maybe you need to get in tune with your instincts,_ Allura said.

He told Lance he trusts him, and he meant it.

“G-get off me!” Keith twists from the floor until Lance backs away from him, grin still lit like a Christmas tree. He’s _amused_ by Keith’s resistance, which sends a shiver up his spine, but it’s not long before Lance is putting the bayards away in his own armor, grabbing hold of Keith’s suit collar, and dragging him down the hall.

“Over here!” Lance sings, and a moment later Keith can hear soldiers’ footsteps coming toward them. They sound frantic and hostile and Keith can hear weapons charging and clicking, ready to fire, but then Lance straightens his shoulders, makes a Galran gesture, and says, “ _Vrepit sa_.”

It’s hard not to lose a little hope at that.

Lance tells them he’s here in the interest of the Druids, so the sentries don’t harm them, instead escorting the pair the rest of the way. Up until now, Keith has been able to tune out Pidge’s insistent voice, which has been harsh in his ear while they talk to both Keith and the rescue party, while he thrashes and struggles from the floor against Lance’s grip.

“Keith,” Pidge says, “if you don’t say anything, I’m aborting the mission from here.”

Keith quiets down, feigning defeat for now. “No,” he whispers.

“There you are! At least you’re ali— What do you _mean_ , no?!” Pidge exclaims. “Tell me what’s going on!”

“I can’t talk much,” he says softly. “We’re with the Galra, and they’re taking us in. Lance is… well, he’s possessed.”

“Acting?”

“I think so.”

“You _think?!”_

One of the soldier falls back behind the others to keep a gun on Keith and tells him to be quiet. Keith growls and kicks up at him, missing the gun but managing to get the soldier’s leg with the other; it only succeeds in angering him, and he’s quick to bring the gun closer in warning.

“Stand down,” Lance says, pausing in step. “The Druids will want him alive.”

Unwilling to take the blue paladin traitor seriously, the soldier brings the barrel end of his gun to Keith’s helmet visor. Keith’s heartbeat rushes in his ears but he remains firm, setting a glare on him past the barrel even while his mouth is going dry. He knew it was possible, but now he might consider it _probable_ that he could die here.

“Soldier, _I won’t tell you again_.”

The gun now clacks as it taps the glass of Keith’s visor. Keith understands. Zarkon has been searching for Voltron for ten thousand years, and now they have not one but two Voltron paladins at their disposal. They could keep them both alive as bargaining chips for the lions, but why wait if they can temporarily take Voltron out of commission altogether? It makes perfect sense — the Galra are strategic, yet many of them also abide by instincts of _shoot now, ask questions later_.

Lance’s arm enters the frame and wrestles the gun from the soldier’s hands. He flips it into proper grip, aims it at the soldier’s nose, and fires without a second thought.

Suddenly Keith is right back to where this all started watching Lance attack his friends, hellbent on their destruction. The glow in his eyes as they narrowed or widened with delightful glee or murderous rage in a way that send shiver after cold shiver down Keith’s spine as he wore Lance’s face. Keith had wondered, back then, if any of them would get out alive. He finds himself thinking it again, now, as his eyes follow the Galra soldier’s body to the floor in a disfigured heap, pink blood dribbling out of his head.

Because for all that he’s fought, for all the ships he’s taken down with the rest of the team, for every venomous word he’s fired off, the Lance that Keith knows would never kill point-blank. But this Lance shows not a speck of remorse.

“Weakness is an infection,” Lance says, cold. “Better to cut it off than let it spread. Isn’t that the first thing they teach you in this fucking empire?”

Several clacks sound as the other soldiers raise their guns, but Lance swings his new one about in a slow circle, glancing at every one of them.

“Anyone else feeling testy?” he barks.

A couple of the sentries slightly lower their weapons.

“Didn’t think so.” Lance flips the gun in his grip, looking it over, and decides to keep it. “Hey. Kill me _or_ the red paladin and the Voltron lions are lost. Don’t be stupid.”

As Lance continues to drag Keith down the hall, the sentries fall behind. Their helmets cover the top halves of their faces, but the lower halves show slightly open mouths and faltering confidence as they give hesitant glances to one another. They’re terrified.

“Keith, come in,” Pidge says. “What was all that? Was that Lance?”

Keith’s voice tremors as he tries to find it. “I don’t know,” he whispers, shaky. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know?”_ Hunk says. “Guys, I think we’re officially doomed. If we retreat now, I bet we’ll still be able to get us all back to the ship in one piece.”

“No.”

“Keith,” Shiro warns. “This is no time to let your emotions get in the way of your objectivity. Remember?”

Keith desperately wants to raise his voice but has to keep quiet. “Do you all trust me?”

Several yeses filter into the comms, some reluctant, some firm. Keith sighs, gritting his teeth, and hopes his instincts are right this time.

“Then trust me to make the right call.”

 

~

 

Lance throws Keith across the floor rather unceremoniously, and the room spins for a moment. “I’m back~” Lance shouts, and the echo of his voice, doubled by the strange quality of his voice, tells Keith that the room is spacious. He blinks, lifts his head, and scans his surroundings.

Before he can take in anything more than the gold and pink lights dotting the walls, Keith grunts and curls around himself as Lance sends a swift kick into his gut.

“And I brought a friend!” Lance uses his boot to turn Keith over onto his back, pressing into the now-forming bruise he’s undoubtedly caused. Keith’s head lolls on the floor as he groans. He hates having to act this weak, let alone _feel_ this weak, but it’s all to the mission’s benefit — hopefully.

Keith peels his eyes open and takes a quick inventory. Lance, above him. Guards, stationed behind him, arranged like they don’t yet know how to accommodate the one missing. Containers of quintessence, lining two adjacent walls. Rows of cells, lining the other two walls, hands and heads and defeated figures somewhat obscured by forcefields and bars and glass sheets, just as Lance had said. It’s different from the quintessence room he’d once found himself in on the freighter, ages ago — the floors are flat with only one level instead of two — but it’s fairly close.

A shadow forming from the floor, billowing thin, until it thickens into robed shape and shows its mask.

Keith, up to this point, had somewhat put the Druids out of his mind. And at least there’s only one of them, he thinks, but even one was impossible to beat when he’d encountered it before. Even Shiro had once faced off the head Druid Haggar herself and had only barely escaped thanks to an assist from the others. The problem was that they didn’t fight fair — Keith had once described it as something like playing whack-a-mole, always striking only for them to disappear and reappear somewhere else out of reach. But he supposes fair fighting isn’t exactly the style of the Galra. Combat rules need not apply in the realm of galactic imperialism, after all.

Yet they’re just as unsettling as Keith remembers. Like they have no distinct bodies and no souls to house in them. Like the mask could be torn off and only more shadows would lie underneath to swallow one whole.

“Paladin,” it says, and Keith shivers, because its words aren’t filtered by sound waves but seem to pass through his brain, invasive. “You took a long time.”

“I know, I know,” Lance says with a shrug. “But I had to do some inside work. Gain trust. You know how it is, right?” His jovial manner doesn’t seem to strike a chord with the Druid, who only tilts its head an inch, so Lance’s eyes narrow. “But look where we are now. I’ve captured a Voltron paladin. The red one, quite feisty.”

The Druid dissipates from the air only to burst into form much closer, peering down at Keith. Keith shallows his breathing and squints at him. He _would_ fight, the way he’d done in the hallway, but he doesn’t want to fight this Druid. Not now.

The Druid hums like a purring engine. “And why did you think this would be useful? Emperor Zarkon wants the Voltron lions. Anything else is trivial.”

“You know how humans are.” Lance rolls his eyes. “Alteans, too. Weak races like theirs will do anything for love, including turning at least one of the lions over in exchange for him.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then the Champion.”

“And if they abandon the red paladin entirely?”

Lance snorts a laugh. “Then you can use him in your own experiments. I’m sure a half-Galra, half-human boy will make for a unique subject. Emperor Zarkon seems to have already found him a personal interest.”

The Druid stares down at Keith curiously. It seems to know him, somehow, almost intimately. Like it’s been in his head already. Which doesn’t seem to be possible, except that a lot of things he’d previously thought impossible have occurred in the last several months, so he guesses there’s really no threshold anymore.

The Druid then rights upward, waves a robed hand, and disappears. It reforms at a nearby door and pushes a button to slide it open, stares at them, then goes inside.

Lance tugs Keith up to his feet, muttering something about being tired of dragging his lazy ass, but Keith is only too glad to have some stability again. They follow the Druid into the next room, accompanied by the Galra soldiers, and the door slides shut behind them.

“Hunk, Shiro,” Keith whispers into his comm. “We’re out of the prisoner room. Area clear to move.”

“On it.”

The next room they’ve come into is almost larger than the first, with high ceilings and bright lights that illuminate dark violet walls. A couple of tinted windows edge the top of one wall, and the floor is lined with grids. But impossible to miss is a much taller and wider door on the opposite side of the room, the porthole showing off what’s behind it suggesting only one thing — _airlock_.

Keith knows his tactics are sometimes impulsive and dangerous, but so far airlocks have proved useful against stubborn enemies, and hey, if anything, he’s a creature of habit.

But why there’s an airlock here…

“Paladin,” the Druid says.

“I’m no Paladin anymore,” Lance replies.

The Druid seems to nod, thinking, and then corrects itself. “Soldier. When we infected you, we had a limited amount of time. Thus, we did not use one hundred percent of our abilities to render you at full capacity. And, given that, we have not yet tested your newfound strength.” It nods. “I would like to do that now.”

“Aw, in front of everybody?” Lance laughs. “I don’t want to be a show-off. But, I _guess…_ ” He feigns reluctance as he hands Keith off to one of the guards and steps forward.

What Keith finds surreal is the way that Lance, even when possessed, is still somewhat Lance. Maybe he _is_ amplified. Maybe it’s not true “possession” at all, but rather an infection as the Druid had called it. A corruption, a dark force taking Lance’s traits and dialing them higher and back around into the negatives — speed, agility, sharp intelligence, but a stabbing wit and a penchant for bragging with a side of bitter, vengeful soreness at the thought of losing.

In a way, he’d somewhat come to like those traits in Lance, but not like this.

A hole forms in the ceiling and a gladiator droid comes down, and it suddenly strikes Keith as to where they are. A training deck, much like the one they’ve been using in Allura’s castle. Curiously, the technology is somewhat analogous to its counterpart, but that’s perhaps not what’s most important here. What’s important is what this all means.

The Druids test their experiments here. They train them, build them into loyal soldiers, make sure they’re useful to the empire. If they pass, they’re likely sent to the arena to fight other test subjects. If they fail…

Airlock.

They’re heartless. It’s sickening.

The gladiator, its body a gleaming black with sharp limbs and one dangerous red eye, charges forward. Lance summons the blue bayard into its familiar blue raw-edged sword, yet his stance is casual.

And Keith quickly finds out why.

Lance fights like he’s diving into water. He leans forward, as if about to fall, only to lean low and dart for the gladiator. He dodges underneath its first attack, lunging down on his knee, and glides around behind it to swing his sword backhanded and slice the droid in half until it fizzles out. Straightening his posture and rolling the kinks out of his neck, he spares a sideways glance at the Druid and smirks.

“Really? That’s all?”

The Druid regards him with a slight tilt of its head. Keith thinks it might just send more gladiators out, two or three at a time, or perhaps have him face off against larger beasts. Instead, the Druid warps into battle itself, and Keith silently thanks either Lance McClain or situational luck for the fact that this gives the others much-needed time to haul out the prisoners.

“We’ve got most of them,” Shiro says into his comm.

“Get as many you can into the pods,” Pidge says. “Keith, how’s your end?”

“Can’t talk,” Keith says curtly under his breath. “All good.”

“What?”

“I think he said he can’t talk, but it’s good?” Hunk says. “Has he pressed the panic button?”

“Not yet.”

All the while, Keith watches the fight and takes mental notes. For the fact that the Druids have their cheats, Lance seems to be adapting with a certain ease. His eyes are quick, and when the Druid disappears only to appear somewhere else, it’s like he knows where it’s going. Maybe because Lance is mentally in-sync with it. Maybe the voices are telling him just what to do, where to hit, how to counter. Lance evades and slices through rosy electrified strikes of magic and brushes off attacks like they don’t hurt. Keith can see sweat lining his brow, but his expression is one of joy at the challenge the Druid presents.

The Druid knocks Lance across the floor. While Lance gets to his feet like he’s unaffected, Keith notices a cut at the corner of his lip where it’s possible he bit down on it when he’d fallen. Lance’s tongue darts out to lick the blood away and he grins, twirling his bayard.

“You feel it, don’t you?” the Druid says.

“I do.” Lance takes in a deep breath, filling his body with it. “So much strength, so much stamina. I’m faster, smarter. Better.” He flexes his fingers, as if he experiences far more power in his hands.

Although the Druid lacks the features to smile, it seems pleased nonetheless. “And this isn’t even your full potential, soldier. There will be more for you. Far more. The emperor will be happy to know of this experiment’s success. There’s just one more thing we need to do first.”

“Oh?”

The Druid flashes away and returns at a smaller distance from Lance.

“Your heart. It still holds ties to others.”

Lance’s eyes go cold. “I assure you, it doesn’t.”

“Good.” It points, not at Lance but past him, at Keith. “Kill the red paladin.”

Keith stiffens and Lance seems to do the same. A tick forms in Lance’s brow and he frowns, just a little, just enough, but maybe he’s only seeing things.

“The red paladin remains alive, as we discussed.”

“We never agreed to terms,” the Druid says. “Your ability has been tested, soldier. Now, your allegiance.”

Keith wonders if the Druid can read his mind or at least sense the terror that’s slowly threatening to overtake him. If Lance refuses, the mission will be compromised, and who knows if they’ll all have time to get out. If Lance goes along with it, if Lance is not acting, Keith is as good as dead unless he does something. He takes a deep, unsteady breath. _Trust your instincts. Trust Lance._

They’re both in conflict with one another.

Lance decides not to argue any further. He adjusts the bayard in his grip and half-turns to Keith, only lifting his gaze from the floor after a moment of thought. His gleaming eyes bore into Keith, wide and impassive. No smiles. No sweet talk. No fluidity. He steps toward Keith, sword ready at his side. Keith’s hands twitch in his cuffs.

The others’ voices come through the comm, but they’re distant in Keith’s ears like he’s plunged underwater. Senses are muffled. Lance is getting closer and closer, deliberately slow, like he’s savoring in such an easy kill. One of the guards shoves Keith forward until he nearly stumbles into Lance.

When Keith glances up, he locks eyes with normal deep blue ones. Keith wants to laugh and cry all at once at the same time as he finds it hard to breathe, and _holy shit, this kind of_ worked.

“You trusted me,” Lance says quietly, a faint smile on his lips.

Keith swallows his relief and whispers, “I did.”

Lance closes his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

It all happens so fast.

With one fluid swipe, Lance’s blade cuts through the handcuffs. Pidge’s voice breaks through the helmet loudly, “The panic button has been activated! Get them out of there!” and Keith doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that they’re free. The blue bayard shimmers and returns to the shape of Lance’s gun and he fires shots in quick succession at the remaining soldiers and then at the door panel until it opens, and Keith is suddenly on the other side of it after a hard shove.

Lance then twists around to fire at the airlock button. Alarms blare and lights flash, bathing them in a scarlet glow and a piercing sound that jars Keith’s bones.

“Lance, what the _hell_ are you doing?!” Keith shouts, but then the huge airlock doors are slowly hissing open and the door just in front of him is automatically sliding shut.

“Keith, get out of there!” Allura.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?!” Coran.

The seconds while the door closes feel like minutes. Perhaps the mission was a success, but Keith has failed. Half his duty was to go with Lance and make sure he was safe. Make sure he didn’t do something _completely idiotic._ And here he was, thinking Lance had his act together.

He sees Lance on the other side, the airlessness of space beginning to pull at him, tug him off the floor. The soldiers, unconscious, are already halfway out, and the Druid is nowhere to be found, maybe having disappeared when it sensed danger. Time is running out — if Keith is going to do anything, he has to do it now. So he does, jumping through the door at the last second.

Fear crosses Lance’s features. “No! Keith!”

He hears someone, maybe Hunk, maybe Shiro, shouting, but the doors close behind him. Keith quickly takes Lance’s wrist and grabs onto the nearest anchored object he can find with his other hand. The wind of space comes much quicker now, battering at them both with impossible force. Keith feels like his arms might rip off, but he grits his teeth and does his best to hold on.

“Keith! Let me go!”

“Did you even _listen_ to a single word I said? Do you ever listen?!” Keith yells at the top of his lungs, hardly able to hear himself speak with the rush of air, and tears sting his eyes. “If you think I’m just leaving without you, you’re more of an idiot than I thought! How _stupid_ could you get thinking you could martyr yourself for our sakes?!”

Lance squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s better this way!”

“It’s not better if you’re gone, Lance! You’re important! Like hell I’m letting you die!”

Keith thanks whatever gods are out there that the airlock takes its time to open. His fingers strain to hold onto both his anchor and Lance. The hopelessness of the situation is starting to settle, as Keith can’t do much while using both of his hands, but Lance appears to have already submitted. Yet he stares at Keith, open and terrified, eyes red and full of water.

He tightens his hand and wrestles his wrist out of Keith’s hold, and no matter how much Keith grasps for purchase again, it’s too late — the airlock is pulling him away. Keith releases his grip and falls after him, no plan on his mind other than _Lance, Lance, Lance_ , because he _promised_ the others, himself, even Lance, that he’d return to the Castle _alive._

Keith uses his suit boosters to thrust forward enough to grab Lance. They’ve got one helmet and no shot. So without hesitation Keith takes his helmet off, puts it on Lance, and activates the oxygen shield.

A moment later, they’re floating in empty nothingness. Keith waits for Lance to blink his eyes open, get his breathing back, before he recognizes the sensation in his own body, light-headed, dry, cold, and time begins to slow. His sight blurs even as he squints. His lids are so heavy. He’s so tired.

Past his fading vision, Lance is screaming. One syllable, maybe his name, maybe something else, but he can’t hear it in the sound-vacuum of space. Free-flowing tears wobble in the zero-gravity of his helmet.

He sees his house in the desert, windmill turning slowly in the breeze, soft clouds of dust curling across the horizon. He sees Shiro in his off-brown Garrison uniform, smiling sweetly, no white in his hair, no grief in his heart. He sees the fighter ship’s dashboard laid out in front of him for the first time, remembers the marvel he felt at all the control he could have. He sees Red’s dashboard, instead, flickering to life, and recalls the surge of something _right_ at his fingertips. Sendak, beating at the forcefield he’d raised between them. Zarkon, emerging from his ship to do the work himself, telling him what he’d find out soon enough. The Castle. Arus. Balmera. Shay touching her hand to the walls. He sees the sun. He sees the moon. He sees the beach and feels a warm hand clasped in his own and a desperate wish to keep the moment still forever. Red, heat, fire, fading. Ice. He sees stars. At every turn, stars. Stars and, in front of him, Lance, blue and red and white and black and breathing.

But Lance is okay, Keith thinks as he drifts off.

Lance is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *crowd booing*


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took a month to update,, I can't believe how time got away from me!
> 
> One more fanart to close off this fic! [Some infected Lance from the lovely dalipant](https://twitter.com/dalipant/status/787455696455380992)~~
> 
> Enjoy!

_“KEITH!”_

_“Well done, Lance.”_

“No… _”_ His voice cracks. “This isn’t what I wanted, not Keith, I didn’t mean for this…”

_“You’ve proven yourself capable.”_

“Shut up!”

 _“I was skeptical of your plan at first,”_ it says. _“But you’ve done it, Lance. You’ve finally killed a paladin.”_

Lance goes quiet, gulping for some kind of air, some kind of stability that won’t come. Like he’s not wearing the helmet at all, unable to breathe, unable to hear the emptiness around them except what’s in his head. He _has_ done well. He did as promised. He fought like never before, showed no mercy, swore his allegiance to the Galra empire, and he hates that he’s _proud_ of that. They’ve _made_ him proud.

His words wobble. “It was supposed to be _me._ ”

They’re stranded. No tether. No beacon. Nothing in sight except for the open airlock on the Galra ship. Where is the Castle? The pods? Lance can’t discern anything from stars. He never realized how far they kept the Castle from battle on missions like these. He glances about.

“Hello? Someone?”

The comm only crackles. Something’s wrong with it — or maybe they’re out of range, or maybe the mission went wrong on the other end, too.

_Space is so big._

_I hope they don’t find us._

_I can’t face them._

_I killed Keith._

“C’mon, please…”

Lance shakes Keith by the shoulders; his head only lolls slowly and his hair fans around his face, out in the empty space, reminding Lance of just how surrounded they are by _nothing, not even air, air that Keith needs to breathe._

His chest aches, tight and ready to burst all at once. His face is drenched with tears and he can taste salt pooling in the corners of his mouth, some droplets lifting off his skin to hover in the helmet. Keith’s helmet. He can’t think of a worse way this could have ended. Keith is _dead_ , and he doesn’t even have to think about the fact that it’s his fault, he knows that already, but _god_. Keith had trusted him. Trusted him to be in control, trusted him to carry out a successful mission. And it’s bad enough that Lance betrayed that trust, but for Keith to trust him _again_ after all of that, to lay down his life for Lance to go on…

 _“You didn’t even need me to help you this time, you did it all on your own,”_ the voice says.

“That soldier deserved it,” Lance says numbly. “But Keith…”

_“The first kill is always the hardest. Especially when it’s someone you love.”_

And just like that, Lance is sobbing all over again. He draws Keith closer as though his warmth, his breath, could somehow seep into him by proxy. Hope is a fickle, fleeting thing, unreliable at best, heartbreaking at worst. Maybe Keith has a chance, but it’s slim and fading as the seconds go by, as they drift listless and lost in space.

Lance wants to die. He’d wanted to die before then, but for a cause. For his friends. To let them go on without his burden upon them. Now he just wants to die to pay for what he’s done to Keith, has never more wished to cease existing and end it all for everyone.

_How can he be worth saving if all he’s done is slowly destroy them?_

He palms the underside of the helmet. Hesitant.

_Just push._

An image glints off the visor. Something moving. Something bright, shining—

The jaws of a lion swallow them up, sending them straight into the cockpit. Lance holds Keith tight, unwilling to let him to, and they tumble across the floor when gravity hits. The helmet hits hard, dizzying him momentarily, and he comes to, a second later, with Keith’s limp weight on top of him. They slide a little as the lion performs a sharp turn. Lance scrambles upright, flipping Keith to the floor so he can get a look at him and shake his inert body again.

“Keith! Keith, we’re safe.” Is he breathing? Is there anything left? Lance is trembling, hands unsteady as they grip Keith’s armor. It’s all he can do to keep himself grounded while his mental state is still in zero gravity. “Wake up, you can wake up, c’mon buddy…”

“What the hell happened out there?!”

Lance lifts his head, helpless. “Pidge?”

“ _What happened?_ What are you doing with Keith’s helmet?”

Lance swallows, then turns his gaze to Keith, lying on the floor, eyes closed. He’s not moving. “H-he put it on me. While we were shot out of the airlock, he put it on me, I couldn’t stop him in time, I…”

Pidge pushes a flurry of buttons on the dashboard, washing the cockpit with a slight emerald glow. It makes Keith look sick, dead already, pale. “We’ll get the details when we’re back at the Castle,” Pidge says from the pilot’s chair. “Our best hope is getting Keith to a healing pod. Hang tight, we’re almost there.”

Lance nods quickly. He needs a quick distraction so he doesn’t fall apart completely. “What about the others?”

“Hunk and Shiro managed to get all the prisoners out. They should be at the Castle now. Coran didn’t want me taking the Green Lion, but I made an executive decision.”

Pidge takes a deep breath, somewhat uneven. They’re glad they did it, Lance realizes. Pidge made a call and saved them. Well, saved Lance, and hopefully Keith, too.

Lance studies Keith intently, searching for any sign of life. And despite how pale he looks, it’s as though Keith is merely asleep. Peaceful, unassuming. Yet here Lance is, mind and heart and body racing, needing something to do, craving some kind of hope even still.

“Lance, you took medical training, right?”

“Yeah, like, one class, the basic requirement, I barely passed—”

“Didn’t they tell us how long a human being can survive in space? Do you remember?”

Lance’s brow twitches and he swallows, dry. “Um. Consciousness for… ten seconds, right? And after that, another…” He racks his brain. “Another minute or two?”

“And how long were you both out in open space?”

“I-I don’t remember.” It felt longer than that. Much longer. An hour. But it can’t have been.

“Lance, _think_.”

“Pidge, I can’t think right now, I _can’t,_ ” Lance stammers. The helmet is squeezing his head, tight, not for him, claustrophobia-inducing. He tugs the helmet off himself so he can run his hands through his hair and attempt to breathe, in, out, fight the hyperventilation that’s too strong to ignore. He drops his hands to Keith’s breastplate. “Keith, Keith. Wake up, dammit, you’re so _stupid_ …”

He can’t yet take his suit off to feel for breath or warmth, so he leans down to touch his cheek to Keith’s. It’s ice-cold. Pressing his gloved fingers to the pressure point under Keith’s jaw gets no distinct response of a heartbeat. Would CPR work? There shouldn’t be anything blocking Keith’s airway, so what’s taking so long?

He’s actually dead. He’s _dead._ Lance trembles angrily. Angry with himself for causing this, angry that Keith had to go this way, not in battle with dignity the way he would have wanted but as a needless martyr when Lance should’ve been the one to die. Frustrated with Keith, too, for doing something so moronic, because even if Keith is dead, Lance has every right to still be upset with him.

Lance pounds a fist hard against Keith’s breastplate. “ _God—_ ”

Keith’s eyes fly open and he takes in a desperate gulp of air. His chest heaves, though it’s strained like he doesn’t have enough space in his lungs to take in the amount of air he needs.

“Keith!” Lance starts, and he lifts Keith’s head, but Keith turns onto his side, coughing and gripping the floor and shivering violently. He tries to push himself up but miserably fails, so Lance turns him back again to cradle him. “Pidge, he’s cold, he needs warmth.”

“If the lions have thermostats, I don’t know where they are!” Pidge says. “Nothing I can do. Almost there.”

Keith’s breath shakes, and yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with it. This isn’t something he can come back from without some kind of help. They need to get to the healing pods. But for now, Lance supports his head and tries to warm him with his own body heat, even if the armor isn’t quite so generous as to give it. Keith’s eyes are still closed, but when he peeks them open, clinging to the vestiges of consciousness, Lance has to look close to see the hint of yellow gleaming under his lashes. Keith makes a small noise in the back of his throat and passes out. But he’s got enough movement, enough faint breath, to show he’s still alive, if barely.

The lion comes to a stop, and as soon as its jaws open, the rest of the team rushes in. Shiro is first, quick to kneel down to Keith. Pidge explains what they know; Shiro only nods and scoops Keith up from Lance’s arms and heads for the healing pod inside the Castle.

“What was all that commotion?” Allura says.

“We saw the airlock open!” Coran adds. “What went on out there?”

But they’re forced apart in no time by Hunk’s form which seems so massive from Lance’s place on the floor, and he’s never seen Hunk look so _furious_ , never an expression he’s had directed at him. He marches straight for Lance, towering over him, coming down to him, yanking Lance into a crushing hug.

“Don’t you _ever—_ ”

“I know,” Lance murmurs, “I know.”

“Clearly you _don’t_ , no matter how many times I have to get it through your thick skull that we _care_ about you,” Hunk says, firm, unsympathetic. “You and I are going to have a long talk.”

Lance nods. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. But I’m going to _make_ you sorry. Tough love, dude.”

Lance has to admit that Hunk is right. The only thing he’s sorry for is what happened to Keith. But maybe a conversation will do some good if Hunk is the one to give him a pep-talk life-lesson beatdown. So he’ll take what he can get.

He sinks into Hunk. “I deserve it.”

“Damn right you do.”

There’s wetness in Hunk’s voice which tells Lance he’s either crying or teetering on the edge of it. So he brings his arms around Hunk and holds him there, happy to indulge.

He wonders how he ever thought he could have given this up.

 

~

 

Keith is placed in a healing pod right away. His breathing seems to be doing all right, but that’s not all they’re concerned about — enough oxygen deprivation, even Lance knows from his basic medical knowledge, can cause brain damage.

In the meantime, the team sits Lance down to hear out his explanation. How he’d managed to talk to the voices in his head and make a deal: Lance would either give himself up to the Druids or kill Keith, with each option being both convincing and satisfying enough for his addled mind to agree to the proposition. How he’d let the Galra side of himself assume a piece of control, leaving Lance to cooperate but improvise, if necessary. How he’d learned to share his consciousness, work with it, bend it to his will as long as he held the leash tight enough — a feat that had proven itself mostly successful yet utterly taxing, mentally and physically.

Lance gets his fair share of chewing-out. But maybe this time he sees that it’s all coming from a place of frustration, of desperation, of love. Even the voices in his head have a hard time arguing him out of that one.

“Sit still.”

“Piiidge.”

“I’ll send this screwdriver right through your skull on purpose if you keep moving.”

“On accident or on purpose?”

“Take your pick.”

Lance shivers. “Noted.”

They sit on the floor as Pidge fiddles with a device somewhere on his temple and Hunk holds his hand for… support? What for, Lance doesn’t know yet. But he’s set up camp on the steps at the threshold of Keith’s healing pod and refuses to move, so Pidge and Hunk have been forced to take their work here. They haven’t yet told Lance what the contraption is — only that they’ve been working with Allura and Coran to create it using Earth science as a medical basis and Altean science to carry it further. Basically, Hunk told him it would help and that it was “all going to be okay” before he handed him off to Pidge, which is definitely not in the realm of “okay.”

The voices in his head have been particularly strong after Lance pulled his suicide stunt on the Galra ship, almost like they know they’ve been tricked and refuse to back down any longer. They crowd his head and he attempts to push it down, but it’s like trying to push down foam; push as hard as you want, but it’ll retake its form one way or another.

_“This paladin is so small.”_

_“You could kill them easily.”_

Pidge begins to apply something generously to his skin, something cold and wet just under the hairline on the right side of his head. Then more on the back of his neck, which sends a chill up his spine. It all tingles, goes numb. His fingers curl.

It _would_ be easy, wouldn’t it?

_“Snap of the neck, just like that.”_

_“You almost killed them once. It felt good, right?”_

_“And the big one, you can take him, too.”_

Lance measures the distance between the three of them. It would be smarter, probably, to take Hunk out first, but Pidge, while small, is clever and fast. Take out Pidge, and he’d have enough of a shock factor on Hunk to give him a window of time.

_“You know now how strong you are.”_

Hunk squeezes his hand.

“Ready?” Pidge says.

Lance blinks back to reality. “Ready for what?”

A piercing sensation jackhammers into his head, right along the side, followed by another, smaller, that digs into the base of his skull. The numbing agent has only sunk in so far, leaving the pain simmering deeper underneath. It’s as though a flash bulb has gone off, momentarily blinding him with white.

“This will probably hurt,” Pidge says much too late.

“ _Hoooly_ Mary mother of _what— Why?!”_

“Local anesthetic was all we had,” Pidge answers, and presses on the device to turn it on, which only hurts.

Hunk strokes his knuckles. “Sorry, dude. Deep breaths.”

Lance whines and sweats a little. “Guys, I am not your guinea pig, I do _not_ appreci…” But he trails off and blinks slowly. That’s new. Actually, that’s _old,_ a sensation he hasn’t experienced in what feels like years.

 _Silence_.

“Whoa.”

“Is it working?” Hunk says.

“You never told me what it was supposed to do,” Lance says, somewhat bitter.

Pidge rolls their eyes a little. “Birthday surprise. What are you feeling?”

Lance cranes his neck a little, back and forth, tilts his head to and fro. The device is still heavy on his head, though he supposes he may get used to it after a while. “I don’t… I don’t really hear them. There’s still some whispers, but they’re… far away.” He looks over at Pidge. “Is that the right answer?”

“More or less.” Pidge sighs, relaxing for perhaps the first time since this all started. “Since we can’t get rid of all that Galra programming, I thought we could try using a sort of neural dampener. When certain parts of your brain activity light up, the implant is designed to counteract them and bring them down. Kind of like a shock collar without the shock.” They shrug. “Sorry. Couldn’t have the Galra part of you knowing what we were up to.”

“The pod we kept you in before took some automatic readings while you were in there,” Hunk says. “Pidge and I were taking a look and saw places of spiked brain activity that matched times when you would’ve had it the worst. We went from there.”

“Wow.” Lance feels the pain going down. “Thanks, you guys. Really.” He wants to cry from how good it is to have his own head again, just a little bit. “It feels great. I mean, right now it freaking hurts, but it’s great.”

Pidge waves their hand and puts away their tools. “I’ll tinker with it.”

“Sure.”

“And just ‘cause I’m giving you this doesn’t mean you’re allowed to do all that crazy stuff again. At this rate you’ll give me a permanent migraine and then _I’ll_ need an implant.”

Lance laughs a little. “Thank you, Pidge. You did good.”

Pidge’s mouth pinches and their eyes leave him, tracing the floor. Then they dive forward and wrap their arms around Lance’s middle with incredible force, tuck their head under Lance’s chin, and Lance sinks just so, hesitant before letting his an arm fall carefully around them and a hand stroke their hair. Hunk’s arms quickly envelop them both.

Lance doesn’t just feel warm, loved, safe. He is.

 

~

 

“How’s the implant working?”

Lance looks up from the nest of cushions he’s created for himself on the steps after he complained about the hard floor to Hunk, who is an angel, and his pile of sewing materials he’s used to keep himself busy.

Shiro. He feels self-conscious, suddenly, knowing they haven’t really been alone together for a long time.

And how is he supposed to act, having put them all through this but especially his mentor, his idol?

“H-hey, Shiro,” Lance says, cracking a smile. “It’s working really well, actually. Still kind of sore, though. We’ve got to get some better anesthetic around here.”

Shiro chuckles and comes over to sit with him. “So you’re going to stay here all night?”

Lance shrugs. “Someone has to be here when he wakes up.”

“We can take turns.”

He pauses. “No. It’s fine.”

Shiro smiles. “You really care about him, don’t you?”

Lance doesn’t answer. He curls his jacket a bit tighter around himself and sticks the needle he’s using into one of the cushions for safekeeping. “He’s not conscious in there… But sometimes I wouldn’t have anyone when I woke up. So I know what it’s like.”

“I know the feeling,” Shiro says. “When you’re alone with nothing to hold onto, nothing to tell you you’re going to be fine one day…”

There seems to be something on Shiro’s mind, and Lance won’t push, but he won’t brush aside the opportunity for him to open up. He lets him speak.

“You know I don’t remember much.”

Lance nods but doesn’t look at him. Shiro doesn’t need to be observed. Shiro pauses, like he’s debating whether to say any of this to Lance at all, whether it would actually help him. He swallows, audibly.

“But what I do remember is Matt and Sam. And, uh… Layha, Reski, Wiluar, a few names and faces of other species, ones I know patched me up after I fought in the arena. No matter what I did in there, or what I turned into, or how much blood I had on my hands… in the midst of everything, that was what I clung to. Them.”

Lance knows the feeling well; he can hardly express how grateful he is for all of them, for without them he knows he would truly be far-gone.

“But I also remember being alone,” Shiro continues. “I had to depend on myself, and I think that’s one of the hardest things to do. Push yourself up on your own strength when you think you have nothing. The Galra use that, exploit that.” He puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “I know you struggled, we could all see it. But I’m glad you pulled through in the end.”

Lance’s brow furrows. “But I _didn’t_ ,” he says, “I was ready to let them win.”

“That’s not letting them in, that’s taking everything they wanted from them,” Shiro says. “They wanted not just you but all of us, and you were ready to save us even if it meant sacrificing your own wellbeing. I would have done the same thing.”

Lance wants to say that’s kind of why he thought he could do it — because it’s what Shiro would have done, and if he leads by anything it’s by example — but he can’t put that kind of emotional weight on Shiro’s shoulders. Not when he’s carrying everything else. So he’ll take this one thing off of him.

Shiro pats him on the back. “I’m proud of you, Lance.”

After everything they’ve been through, after days and weeks of emotional and mental and physical turmoil, fighting himself at every turn and hurting his friends anyway when they trusted him most, working hard to keep them safe while trying to control the new evil wearing his skin, words of pride from his idol halt his whole world. Lance whips his head around to face Shiro before he can stop himself, and his throat closes up like he’s violently ill, but in that brief moment he couldn’t be happier, even if he doesn’t feel quite so deserving.

He has no idea what to say to that except, shakily, “I’m proud of you, too, Shiro.”

Something he can’t quite place is sitting behind Shiro’s smile, but he appears to brush it off. They sit for a little while, watching Keith sleep in his pod, and talk about more mundane things. The smell of the beach they’d both missed. Lance’s mother’s guava cake, which Shiro still finds himself craving. First-day piloting jitters. What Commander Iverson was like when he was younger, and jeez, if they ever make it back, Lance is going to spill all. Shiro eventually stands to go to bed, but not before tousling Lance’s hair on his way out and Lance is reminded, once more, of how fortunate he is to have his team.

 

~

 

Lance is awake when the pod opens, luckily, and he’s the one to catch Keith when he falls out. He’s barely conscious — which probably means he needs plain rest — but he’s breathing well and Lance can’t quite believe it knowing the last time he held Keith he was cold and unresponsive. The white medical suit looks strange on him, a sharp contrast from the darker colors he’s used to seeing Keith in. Still, the white offers something lighter, unbelievably, than the pale sheen of his skin, adding to his face some color that isn’t actually there.

Lance has to call for help to get Keith to bed, because he can’t do it himself — as much as he’s more or less aware of his heightened strength, he doesn’t want to use it for this. Something about it feels wrong.

They put Keith on oxygen support and an IV, just in case. Keith, eyes hardly open like he’s still sort of dreaming, doesn’t protest.

Now that Keith is out, Hunk insists Lance sleep in a proper bed, and Lance, too, can’t find it in him to put up a fight.

 

~

 

_It’s ironic, the way we exchanged roles._

_Pod for pod. You waited for me once. Now I’m waiting for you, making sure you’re okay. It’s what we do now, isn’t it? We watch each other’s backs._

_But man, I didn’t think you’d do something like that._

_To be fair, I should have seen it coming. You’ve never really cared about yourself when you see someone else in danger. I sort of admire that, you know? I’m more of a stop-and-think kind of guy. Evaluate first, you know? Not sure whether I should keep that habit, but maybe you’ve been balancing me out._

_I didn’t think I deserved that. For you to save me. What have I done for you to be so ready to give me your life? You, who’s done so much? World-class fighter, stellar swordsman, quick and intuitive and powerful. But you’re reckless. And damn selfless, to boot — I never pegged you the type. I guess the Garrison really did instill something similar in the both of us, huh?_

_I don’t resent you for insisting I be kept in the containment pod for a while. It hurt, at first, to think you were the one who trusted me the least. But I know what you were doing. I think I knew back then, too, but I was being selfish. I wanted out._

_Thank you for protecting them. I remember what you did when I was first attacking you all, and I know you didn’t want anyone getting hurt, or killed. Pidge, Shiro, Hunk… even Allura and Coran, you saved them. And when it came down to it, when I was ready to kill myself or have you do it… you didn’t even want to do that. I could see it._

_You wanted to save me, too. No matter the cost._

_…_

_I’m sorry._

_God, I’m so sorry. You can do whatever you want to me when you get out. Kick me, hit me, whatever, I don’t care. You don’t deserve what I did to you. I completely betrayed your trust and I know that, and you probably know that, too. And you_ still _gave me your helmet._

_Why do I mean that much to you?_

_I’m a mess. I’m not strong. I’m not intelligent. I don’t contribute. I’m a waste-of-space pilot who was supposed to freight cargo around, not fight in a fleet, that was_ your _role. But I took up this impossible mantle, didn’t I? Because I wanted to prove I could be something, something comparable to you, something meaningful to you. And I failed. I could never rise to standard, not in the Garrison, not here. All I did was prove I’m dead weight to any team I’m on._

_All of you have things you’re good at. Pidge is an amazing technician, Hunk is a brilliant engineer, Shiro’s a strong leader, Allura’s a cool alien with freaking superpowers, Coran’s a mechanic and strategist, and me? I’m not someone who’s “the good one” at anything._

_And yet you put me over yourself._

_I don’t get that, but I’m trying to understand._

_I’ve had all these feelings to a pretty big degree, I know. But I think… it hasn’t been just me, lately. It’s the Galra, the Druids, who’ve made me think all those things. I projected them onto all of you, tearing myself down while I put you all on pedestals. I can’t do that anymore, and I shouldn’t. It’s a disservice to you._

_I don’t quite know where I’m going with this. But I just want you to understand where I’m coming from. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday. And maybe when that day comes, I won’t be feeling all these things so much._

 

In the early morning, Hunk finds Lance fast asleep outside Keith’s door. The blanket he took with him has been kicked mostly off, and he’s learning, it seems, to lie on his left side so as to avoid aggravating the implant. Hunk smiles and bends down to tuck the blanket over him again, and Lance shifts, curling into it.

Keith’s room is quiet. It can’t be much longer before he’s up, but at least his readings have been steady. Hunk watches the door for a moment.

He thinks about how quickly Keith must have had to act and make his decision. How he probably didn’t hesitate for even a second to risk everything. How not just anyone would do something like that.

“Thank you,” Hunk says.

Peacefully, the boys sleep.

 

~

 

Lance can’t do anything. He’s restless. He paces the floor of his room, the control deck, the lounge, the dining room, can’t sit still to save his life. Under normal circumstances he’d be on the training deck to tire out his anxiety, but the thought of holding a deadly weapon in his hands again makes him far too uneasy. So he annoys the hell out of his teammates until then, bouncing his leg, clicking his tongue, tugging at his fingers to pop the joints.

So when Allura enters his room to tell him Keith is awake, Lance is on his feet in a second.

_“Will Keith even want to see you?”_

_We talked about this, remember? Don’t think like that anymore._

He runs across the hall and nearly punches the console to get Keith’s door open. Coran is already there checking readings and administering some kind of fluid, and when he notices Lance he moves out of the way to say hello.

And then Coran shrieks.

“Keith, no! Stay in bed!”

Keith, still pale and looking a little sluggish, has enough determination in him to swing his legs over the edge of the mattress and enough energy to shove Coran out of his way. Lance crosses the room to make up the distance and when they slam together, arms around Keith like they belong there, Keith holding himself up by clutching at Lance’s jacket, he feels…

 _Home_.

“You damn suicidal idiot,” Lance chokes out.

“Look who’s talking,” Keith says. His breath is ragged, but he’s _breathing_ , and that’s what matters. He’s here, he’s safe. Lance selfishly draws him closer and Keith melts into him like desert sand, warm and alive.

_“He doesn’t love you. None of them love you.”_

_Yes, they do._

Lance feels Keith’s nails dig into his shoulder blades. Desperate. He puts his head on Keith’s shoulder and Keith breathes deeper, better.

_“But you’re a burden.”_

_No, I’m not._

After a little while they finally decide to acknowledge Coran, who has been complaining for a good minute that Keith needs to get back in bed even as Keith eventually waves at him and insists he’ll be fine. Others have filtered in, and they go through the rounds — assuring Keith they’ve already scolded Lance well into the next solar system. Hunk gives Keith perhaps the biggest hug of all time, never stops thanking him for saving Lance, makes a dozen impossible promises on galactic levels, and offers the best meal of his life whenever Keith feels like eating again. It’s a bit overwhelming, so understandably space is given, Keith is fed, and the team relaxes.

A horrible chapter, closed — for good, they hope.

Lance finds him later in the control room. Keith has taken a seat by the window where they can see the expanse of stars surrounding the Castle through the span of its curved windows. Keith leans against the window, and for a moment Lance thinks he’s asleep until he turns, hearing him come in.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Lance parrots. “There you are. Feeling better?”

“Better than I felt in the vacuum of space. Though if I’m honest, it was pretty peaceful.”

“Ugh, don’t say that,” Lance says with a wrinkle of his nose as he steps up to him. “I don’t want to know how nice almost-death is.”

“That’s fair.”

Lance sits with him on the sill and puts his back to the window. He can confidently say he’s seen enough, for now, of space. Even if they’re surrounded by it, and will be for who-knows-how-long, he’s taking a break from space. It’s healthy.

He grins. “So now, is it safe to say I… take your breath away?”

Keith sighs and moves. “I’m leaving.”

“No, Keith, please!” Lance laughs, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Stay.”

Keith sits back down, looking reluctant, but Lance can see the hint of a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. It’s cute. _Jeez_ , he finds himself thinking, _how far we’ve come now._

“Did Coran say anything about what happened out there?” Lance says.

“I can’t claim to understand it,” Keith says. “Only that… depending on how long we were out there, I could’ve survived decently. But he says it’s possible, too, that I came out okay because Galra don’t need air the same way humans do. So, in a weird twist of events, being part Galran actually sort of saved my life.”

Lance blinks. “Huh. How about that.”

“It’s only a guess, though,” Keith shrugs.

Lance chews on that thought. They’re both in the same boat, in a way, being part of something not only inhuman but enemy, too. It’s been terrifying to consider — that their enemy is so close to them like something of a troublesome, unavoidable friend, afflicting three out of five paladins, enemy influence taking up nearly a quarter of Voltron.

But maybe it’s not so bad. And maybe they don’t have to think of it as a detriment.

“Look, Keith,” Lance says, sinking a bit. “I was stupid back there. And, _being_ so stupid, I put you all in danger when I should’ve done a lot more thinking on my part. I’m sorry. To everyone, but to you especially. For betraying your trust.”

Keith chews on his tongue thoughtfully. “I’ll admit, it stung. But… I kind of knew what you were doing.”

Lance snorts. “And I forgot about your penchant for danger. That’s on me.”

“Danger is my middle name.”

“You don’t _have_ a middle name, Keith. Plus, Danger can’t be your middle name, seeing as it’s _my_ middle name.”

“Your middle name is Alejándro.”

Lance makes a strangled noise. “W- _who told you that?!”_

“No one. Your flight school certificate was sitting on your desk at home.”

“Oh my god,” Lance whines.

Keith laughs, and Lance is confused to find it so soft and pretty, so welcome. It sounds good, and it _feels_ good to hear from him, after everything.

“Well, anyway,” Keith says. “You did throw us for a loop out there, but thanks to all this we got scores of prisoners out of Zarkon’s hands. So hopefully this kind of thing never happens to anyone else. We’ll work hard for that.”

Lance nods in agreement. It’s something he needs to hear — that the mission wasn’t entirely pointless. Even if they didn’t find Matt and Sam Holt, they did talk to some prisoners who said they’d seen a pair of humans matching their description in a work camp. There’s hope, and they’ll keep looking.

“I hear Hunk really gave it to you.”

Lance hisses like it physically hurts. It almost did, the way Hunk whipped him into emotional shape. He’s good at that. “Yeah, dude. I’ve never felt so loved and attacked at the same time.”

Keith chuckles. “Well, I hope it’s taught you well.”

“Taught me what?”

“That we need you, Lance.” Keith says it so plainly, which Lance finds almost startling, but Keith seems to have been raised to possess a mere handful of social graces when it comes to honesty. He’s brutal about it even to someone he cares about. “When all this happened… nothing was the same. We were lost. We couldn’t perform missions as well, and while you were gone we tried to have Allura pilot Blue, but… Well, I think Allura’s more of a leader than a follower. Blue was resistant to take her on at first.”

Lance hadn’t really asked about missions, not sure how to feel about the empty space he’d briefly left in his team. All the other missions they could’ve gone on, too, if not for this whole situation. But he knows Blue, and he knows Allura, and he can’t say he’s very surprised. But it’s a comfort, if anything — that he _does_ add to the team.

“I’m sorry we made you think you weren’t good enough,” Keith adds. “We never realized what we were doing. _I_ should’ve realized.”

Lance laughs a little. “You giving me a pep-talk, too? Hunk gave me one already and I’m still a bit sore.”

“Just listen to me for a second, okay?” Keith says with a slight frown. He reaches forward to take Lance’s hand, just placing his on top of it like he’s keeping him there, not ready to let him slip away again. Not this time. “I told you before that I think you’re the heart of Voltron and I still believe that. Don’t get hung up on skill. Skill is always something that can be honed and improved. But heart? Soul, love, friendship, forgiveness, all those things? You can’t teach that. And you have it naturally, Lance, it’s infused into your very being, it’s everything you are. It’s what you’re good at.”

Lance is quiet for so long that Keith tilts his head.

“Are you okay? Your face is _really_ red.”

“Yeah, I’m fine! Just,” Lance’s voice cracks, “just thinking about what color tie I should be wearing in my casket, holy moly, Keith.”

Keith’s brow furrows. “I saved your life for a _reason_.”

“Do you have any idea…” Lance makes a weird gesture with his free hand, sort of flail-y, sort of like he’s outlining an invisible diagram, “what you’re _doing?”_

“What?”

“We’re — oh, how did I not realize — we’re _bonding_.”

“Oh.” Keith brightens up with a smile. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It means we can’t be rivals anymore!”

“We were never rivals, Lance.”

“Then what _are_ we?”

Keith shrugs, looks at Lance plainly, as if it’s obvious. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

 _“Enemies,”_ his mind says.

_“Traitors. Useless throwaways of the empire.”_

_“Half-breeds.”_

_“Failures.”_

_“Mistakes.”_

Lance takes a deep breath and feels the implant kicking in, pushing the thoughts away. He focuses on his breath, on their surroundings, on Keith and Keith’s hand sitting warm on his own.

They both notice it at the same time — that their hands are still together — and they separate, startled but flustered and hesitant, pulling their hands back to themselves with quiet nervous laughter and muttered apologies, and Lance can’t quite bring himself to look at Keith. But when he glances up again, Keith is watching him. Carefully, like he’s waiting for something, like he can read his goddamn mind.

“No, it’s…” Lance’s mouth feels dry, so he swallows, smiles. “It’s fine. It’s actually… kind of nice.”

So they put their hands together again. Lance isn’t used to it yet — this intimate contact with Keith, despite all the other hugs and touches they’ve now shared — but he knows he likes it and he knows it’s different. Like Keith, for all his fire and ferocity, calms him. Puts him at ease, no matter where they are.

Like home. Not a home that’s always good, because home is never without its conflicts or frustrations or intensities, but a home that _loves_ , endlessly and with purpose. And that’s the kind of home worth going back to, always.

“Thank you,” Lance says. “For saving my life.”

Keith smiles, soft and real. “Thank you for saving mine.”

His thumb brushes over Lance’s knuckles, and Lance’s heart feels weird and fast. It’s a sensation he doesn’t quite want to end. Keith’s fingers have a smattering of calluses wherever the gloves don’t touch, but all they do is tell Lance that he’s real, he’s here.

And after so long of not knowing what to believe, he can breathe a sigh of relief.

Keith snorts a laugh, breaking the brief silence. “You know I’m not letting you go after this.”

Lance sighs and rolls his eyes just a little. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

 

~

 

Pidge is best at infiltration, but that’s not why they insist on going in. Allura says not to get emotionally compromised on missions, but they all realized a while ago — it’s a little too late for that. They can’t help themselves from taking an extra moment of time.

“Can you walk?” Shiro says, clutching purple and black fabric, ready to pick him up if necessary.

“I’m fine,” Matt Holt says, and he puts on a smile for both him and Pidge, “but Dad’s hurt.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Sam Holt sighs, though the slash in the fabric exposing the dark and half-bloody bruise on his calf — an accident in the work camp, they learn later — with the fact that he hasn’t yet stood, tells a different story. Shiro hoists him up anyway, Hunk takes a few more of the injured, and together with another handful of prisoners they all make their way out.

“We’re heading back to the pod,” Pidge says. “Lance, Keith, how are you holding up?”

“Not going to lie, we’re a bit cornered,” Keith says. “But at least we’ve got them distracted.”

Lance cocks his gun. “Just get the prisoners out! We’ll join you once we take care of these guys.”

“Be careful!” Hunk says into the comm. “You’ve got this!”

Lance and Keith have found shelter behind a pillar. They need a plan, Lance always insists, even though Keith’s instincts are still ride-or-die impulse-driven messes that tend to work anyway. But today, because they found Pidge’s family, Keith feels like cooperating. It’s a pretty good feeling.

“So?” Keith says, pausing as a shot whizzes right past them. It lands a few feet away, joining the other marks in the floor from the soldiers’ guns. “Got any ideas?”

Lance turns out to fire a quick shot, swings back. “I’ve got one,” he says, a little breathless. He rolls his head to face Keith with a bit of a devilish smile, and his eyes flash with a wash of yellow. “But it’s a little risky.”

Keith gasps, then sighs and knocks him with his elbow. “I hate when you do that. It’s creepy.”

Lance laughs aloud but blinks the color away. “Well, I wasn’t lying.”

“We don’t need risky,” Keith says. “We need survivable.”

“God, do you know how to have _any_ fun?”

Keith smiles a little. “Sometimes.”

Lance thinks for a moment. The shots fired at the other side of the pillar are getting more intense, closing in. They don’t have a lot of time.

“Have you ever seen Captain America: Civil War?” Lance says.

“Of course I have, I’m not uncultured.”

“When they finally get to the Hydra facility at the end?”

Keith mulls it over. “Oh! Oh.” He nods understandingly. “All right, you get down, put up your shield.”

“What?” Lance frowns. “No, dude, I’m _definitely_ Bucky in this situation! I’m the one with the gun!”

“I have better aim!”

“Long-range combat makes more sense! Besides, I’m _also_ the one who got captured and brainwashed, so I’m, like, the _most_ Bucky.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Keith sighs. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Wait.”

Lance takes him by the shoulders. It’s probably not the best time to be _having a moment_ , but it’s as good as any when the adrenaline’s kicking in. There’s a rush to this that Lance hasn’t been able to shake off since the incident, but he’s kind of all right with it.

“Do you trust me?”

Keith raises a brow at him. “That depends. Are you going to be a self-sacrificing dumbass all the time now?”

“If the impulse strikes,” Lance says. His eyes go wide. “Oh my god, I’m turning into you.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “As long as you’ve got my back.”

Lance smirks. “And you’ve got mine.”

“We _all_ do.”

They touch helmets. Lance can’t help but close his eyes, because every time, the residual voices fade away. Right now it’s just the two of them, side by side, taking on the universe — whatever it’s got in store.

Hunk’s shout comes through in the comm. “Guys, hurry up!”

Keith tugs off Lance’s helmet and kisses him quickly, then puts it back on. He summons his shield. “Let’s go!”

Stunned, Lance blinks himself back into reality. “Oh _come on!”_ he yells after him. “That’s not fair!”

Keith only laughs and ducks down to the floor, rolling himself out past the pillar and taking a barrage of shots from Galra soldiers. And, because Lance is such a good person, he dives into the fire and takes position, the taste of love gracing a confident smile.

The war isn’t over, he knows, not nearly. It’s only just begun.

But one battle, at least, they can say that they’ve won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't quite believe it's over! Thank you all for coming on this journey with me. YCIM has been both fun and therapeutic to write. I didn't at all expect the reception this fic would get (it was just something dark I started for self-indulgent angst) but I'm so happy you've all stuck around and enjoyed!
> 
> To fanartists, commenters, readers — I can't thank you enough. You're all so lovely!! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ
> 
> Multichapter fics are draining, so I have no plans to write another anytime soon. But drabbles and shorter fics will happen, I don't doubt it, so stick around! You can find me on twitter @queerschtein, don't be afraid to come say hi!


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, season 6 gave me some feelings and now an epilogue exists two years later, don't @ me

The lions are quiet when Lance wakes up in his chair in the red lion. Not a stir from her, nor the others that he usually hears first thing—since everything, the quintessence in Lance has made him attuned to the lions’ entities, their souls. Today, he feels nothing.

When Lance had fallen asleep the night before, Coran had been there too, having boasted of his ability to sleep anywhere at any time. Now, Coran is nowhere to be found, but the blankets he’d piled up still lie in a heap by the back corner of the cockpit. Maybe he’s already treading the planet they’re on, hunting for something to serve as breakfast.

Stretching and pulling on his civilian clothes, Lance struggles to get his arm into the sleeve of his jacket as he steps out of Red. The land before him, cold yet desert-like, is barren of all signs of life. If not for a low whistle of wind, Lance might think he’s lost his hearing.

The lions are gone, too.

The others have taken the lions for practice across the plains. Lance watches them go, standing on his own and hugging himself against the chill as they leave him in their literal dust. It should be more exciting to watch than it is; but they didn’t invite him, and that leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Maybe they didn’t want to wake you. That’s nice of them.

Maybe they just didn’t want you around.

Oh. That stings.

The lions touch down near him, the dust and sand billowing under the lions’ paws as they rock to a soft landing.

Lance forces a smile as the doors open. “Hey guys,” he offers, hopeful. “Didn’t want to disturb my beauty sleep?”

Pidge tugs off their helmet. The expression on their face is so disdainful, twisted into an only somewhat concealed sneer. They say nothing—nor does Hunk, who dismissively waves his hand.

“We didn’t bother,” Allura says. She steps out of her lion, Blue, and Lance sees her not in the pink suit she’s usually in, but _his—_ the blue armor. Lance looks down at himself and feels small in his Garrison uniform.

Out of the black lion steps Shiro, not Keith, the new white shock of his hair emerging from his helmet. “We only have five lions,” Shiro says.

“What…” Lance’s heart sinks like a stone. “But… I pilot the red lion. I was just there. I…”

“What are you talking about?”

Keith appears in his peripheral. He wears his red armor, holds the helmet under his arm, long hair blowing, his height all the more prominent. The red lion, loyal, waits behind him. Lance reaches out to Red, but she shuts him out. _No_.

Lance’s eyes don’t sting, but suddenly he’s crying, can’t explain it. “Keith,” he stammers, “you said… you said I belong on the team, so…”

It’s Keith’s expression that cuts him deepest, the harsh knit of his brow into confusion and anger, as he says, “Who are you?”

“No, no, no…” Lance takes a few weak steps back. The ground feels unstable behind him, and he looks over his shoulder to see nothing but a cliff behind his heels and a dark, expansive abyss down below. His heart hammers in his chest. As he glances up again, the other paladins close in on him, malice in their faces. They draw their bayards. Lance puts up his hand in defense. Gripped in one is the crooked bayard sword he used against his friends long ago.

_“Show them.”_

“No, please…” Lance drops the bayard like it burns him. “I won’t…”

_“Show them the mistake they’ve made.”_

“I won’t.” Lance shivers, freezing. “I won’t hurt them.”

_“But look at what they’ve done to you. Ignored you, forgotten you. They’ll turn on you. They’re doing it now.”_

“Stop!” Lance puts his head up to his hairline, to the implant. It must not be working.

He only feels skin. There’s nothing at all, not even a scar. Lance grips the sides of his head, cups his hands over his ears, but they can’t stop the voice coming from the corners and cracks and niches of his mind—what’s been there since this all began.

_“Remind them what you’re capable of.”_

Lance lowers his hands from his ears. His palms glow pink, nearly blinding as a star, and the shining liquid envelops his fingertips and creeps its way to Lance’s wrist. Lance tries in vain to shake it off but it sticks to his skin, spreading faster the more he struggles. His heart catches in his throat. He can’t breathe. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He tastes the quintessence on his tongue and in the back of his throat, and when he swallows without meaning to, fire explodes in his system and behind his eyes.

On his way down over the edge of the cliff, he sees Keith coming towards him. Lance scrambles for purchase on the rocky edge, the ground crumbling to pieces at his fingers.

“Help me!” he manages. “Keith, please…”

But Keith stares, cold. He’s in his Garrison uniform. He says nothing. He only stamps his heel on the ground, and it’s enough to break it. Lance plummets.

Water catches him, his savior—but then it pours into his mouth, his undoing.

As he stares at the undulating surface of the water, just out of his reach, an image forms. It smiles, all glowing eyes and teeth and claws. He’s known what it’s like to be that thing—but he’s never seen it himself, witnesses the terror his friends must have felt.

It wears his face and his clothes. It mimics him. But it’s _not_ him. He has to remember that.

 _“Oh, I think I’m just a part of you as anything else,”_ it purrs. _“If you’d just accepted us for who we are, you wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble.”_

The glow traps his arms in its snare. He can’t move, and his words are failing him.

_“They still resent you, you know.”_

They helped me, Lance says in his head.

_“They wish they hadn’t.”_

You’re wrong.

_“I’ve only ever told you the truth, Lance.”_

Lance tells it to shut up. That all it’s ever done is lie to him, tell him falsehoods and exaggerations that toyed with his emotions and messed with his perceptions of reality. But it keeps speaking, curling around him, holding him just as the quintessence does that slowly consumes his body as they sink into the deep.

 _Lance_.

That voice. There’s something comforting about it, familiar, that he could succumb to at any moment. It seeps into his brain and comes out the other side, sending a ripple from head to toe. He looks down at himself, sees the pink glow wrapping itself around his shoulders, his neck, like an embrace that makes promises it can’t keep.

 _Lance_.

He doesn’t float. The water pulls him farther, deeper into the crevices where light never shines, where sound doesn’t travel, where nothing is left. The face above him pinches its eyes in a gleeful smile as Lance’s lungs fill with water and quintessence and the absence of air. The pink glow tightens around his shoulders and creeps up to his neck, along his jaw, threading to his cheek. The thing above him splays its fingers across Lance’s cheeks, nails scratching the skin behind Lance’s ears, and forces Lance to look right into his shining eyes.

 _“You’ll_ always _be mine.”_

_Lance!_

 

 

He gasps for air, eyes flying open. His body jumps with a start, and suddenly he’s breathing deep, heavy, taking big gulps as his gaze darts about the ceiling before settling on Keith’s concerned expression above him in the dark, the hands on his face, the way Keith dodges to avoid getting knocked in the head.

“It has me,” Lance says, “it got me—”

Keith makes shushing noises, holding Lance’s shoulders and pressing him back to the mattress. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Lance’s head is still in the dreamscape. “But—Keith, you were in it, and you—”

“It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t real.” Keith’s gaze is firm, and that’s enough to shut him up for a moment. Lance feels like he’s gotten off the longest roller coaster, heart banging in his chest like it wants to come out. His lungs work overtime until they hurt. Lance looks about the room, the wood-paneled walls, the bulletin board, the desk, the skylight up in the ceiling that lets in a strip of moonlight and a spatter of stars.

He settles, though the jittery tremble of his anxiety remains.

“You had a nightmare,” Keith says. “You were mumbling something in your sleep.”

Lance has a raging headache. He feels his forehead, breathes a heavy sigh when he finds the implant still there. “What did I say?”

“I couldn’t make it out.”

Lance thinks Keith might be lying. But if he is, it’s probably for his own good.

“I’ll get you some water,” Keith says.

“And some painkillers, please,” Lance mumbles. He sits himself up in bed, careful not to jostle the growing migraine. His hand slips to the back of his neck. Sometimes, he can still feel little bumps from the removal procedure. Keith says they’re only moles, but Lance doesn’t remember having them before the incident.

Keith returns with two tablets and a glass of water. Lance makes quick work of them both, grimacing from the aftertaste. Keith feels his forehead all the while, dabbing a corner of the sheet against his skin where a cold sweat has Lance nearly soaked through his sleep shirt. “A shower might do you good.”

“I just want to rest.”

“Okay.”

It’s not the first time this has happened, though Lance is ashamed to admit it’s been more frequent lately, even after peace with the Galra was achieved and the whole situation with Haggar and her druids was resolved. Each time, Keith has been attentive and mindful—the banter and jabs held back as he brings Lance to reality after ever nightmare.

Lance often wonders what he’ll do on a night when Keith isn’t around.

He finds himself resting against Keith, exhausted. His head lies on Keith’s shoulder, against his neck, and Keith holds an arm around Lance’s shoulders, strokes his thumb up and down his arm. “It’s like I couldn’t remember anything,” Lance mumbles. “When I woke up, just now.”

Keith lets out a chuckle. “Well, as a refresher course: We’re back on Earth. Hunk and Pidge and Matt came by yesterday with cupcakes and dirt bikes. Shiro’s in Japan. We’re taking my mom to meet your family this weekend. We live in the desert, in my place. We have a small farm, a few cows, a chicken coop. We’re here, in my old house, and it’s still a bit of a mess even though you’ve cleaned it three times a week.”

Lance snorts and looks around. “Damn, you live like this?”

Keith swats him gently. Then he kisses Lance on his forehead, the spot just above his eyebrow, like he knows that’s exactly where it hurts, and his hand tangles in Lance’s hair.

“Sorry,” Lance mumbles after a quiet moment.

“Shh,” Keith whispers. “You do that every time.”

“What?”

“Apologize. You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

Lance swallows over a lump in his throat that might be the pills, still sitting there, or might be something else. But he gives a nod, not willing to say it, but at the very least appeasing Keith by acknowledging it.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

They sit there until Lance can’t keep himself upright anymore. Keith brings in some fresh sheets and lowers him down, slides in next to him. Lance turns to him with a smile, brushing his knuckles against the pointed scar-mark on Keith’s cheek, the one he shares with his mother, which is slowly getting swallowed up by stubble.

“You’ll always be loved,” Keith murmurs. “I mean it.”

Lance nods. Keith lets the silence of the night return, until the cricket song resumes outside, until Keith has fallen asleep in his attempt to stay awake to watch over Lance. It’s Lance who lies awake, staring at the ceiling into the skylight that holds a window to a world they once knew, a world that keeps their secrets, their hopes and battles and darkest fears. Their history, never quite behind them. Something from the past, long since buried, speaking to him once more.

When they receive the call to fight, they’ll go. Until then, Lance has his own fighting to do.

He’ll always be loved.

He has to remember that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Author's Note:**

> so this happened .-.  
> fight me on twitter @queerschtein
> 
> ([I also did some art of Lance for this fic](http://queerschtein.tumblr.com/post/146935564938))


End file.
